I feel like people are too harsh on Endwalker, though...

From the CGI intro we were getting "The Final Days are here and it's gonna be big". But it ended up being a bit over half a zone in Thav (spend mostly chasing a baby) and one solo-instance in Garlemald. Then we move on to Elpis and don't really see much of "The Final Days" after that.
So the part that was basicly hyped through the 5.x patches and the CGI, takes up a very small part of the story.
Also extra tonal shift after the first trial with the comic relief rabbits that's much too long. (I know we had it with the Moogles, but the point in HW when we met them was very different from the point in EW).
And the extreme padding that was Labrinth part 2.

Besides that as a WAR main, I'm basically just playing the exact same job as in SHB, but now I get to press one new GCD in my rotation every 1 minute.

Endwalker story is… there. It exists. I enjoy it more than dislike it. But as somebody who had once entertained the idea of… self harming, the story’s messaging just didn’t hit me the way it should be. The emotional manipulation was a cheapshot. Knowing this, it’s definitely not a story I would recommend to my younger self or anybody who had less than ideal mental fortitude. It feels like they’re trying to replicate the success of ShB story (which hands down my favorite expac) but ends up picking all the wrong elements to focus on.

Gameplay wise they’re stale af. My main role is further reduced its relevancy & is made redundant in casual contents to ensure the red and blue DPS booboo gets their DF queue pops faster. Adding insult to the injury, job dev have made several questionable, tone deaf, dismissive, ‘beyond m*r*n*c’, and incredibly rude statements toward one from three major roles in the game it makes me wonder why wouldn’t they just come out and say they hate said role so I can just give up giving feedbacks & focus solely on contents that players made themselves in the times of content drought.

Content wise it feels ‘ShB-lite’ which is stale af. DD is low in my list. V&C had some nice concept going on but boy do they failed to hit that ‘midcore feels’ that I missed. No Field Content so that’s sucks. Isle is… isle lol. Relic? Do we even want to call Manderville the relics? Not to mention that all the VFX glows from last step are copy pasted for -all- weapons. That's a lot of corner cutting. How I ‘somewhat’ fixed this ‘content boredom’ is by making shell FC and do submarine/airship-things on my own which is pretty ironic & I’m sure the bar is low as hell if I have to go through all these hoops.

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Originally Posted by Battler-Ushiromiya

Literally only the forums care about this and this is the smallest percentage of the players. Go away dude

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Does rage baiting counts as Red Truth? Lmao

I've been working through the patches and I can't believe how empty the story has become. And I don't mean it *feels* empty, like a lost world, like Promyvion, just literally actually devoid of anything interesting. Running back and forth through a cleared dungeon with absolutely nothing interesting to click on, read, look at, examine, what?

It didn't invoke the same sense of awe that Xarcabard and Castle Zvahl did or the Promyvions did. It was just... okay here's another 4 man and another trial, and some empty space. Way to effort there, team. Thanks for grabbing my interest with some nods to the Old game I loved and then not delivering a single thing worth doing.

The only saving grace is I really like the new character they introduced. I hope we see more of her.

I found EW decent but not spectacular, overall. It really needed to be two expansions as originally envisioned in order to the have time and space to develop the ideas they were going for, though. You can tell they were running out of ideas with Garlemald in particular and just wanted to get past it. Jamming everything together results in a lot of overly compressed storytelling, nothing gets time to breath and develop organically (and the few times it does try to slow down, like meeting the loporrits, become all the more jarring), and the whole thing ends up feeling rushed. It also has the side effect of not giving Estinien much to do; despite his joining the Scions being a big hype point going in, he's taciturn and not particularly scholarly, so when everyone is standing around talking, he's mostly leaning against a wall off to the side somewhere.

And the patch story is pretty clearly a side story padded out to fill in the MSQ while they work on something else, which ironically gives it the opposite problem.

No, not really. I think the criticisms are all reasonable and deserved.
Endwalker had big shortcomings. Having no long form content in a liveservice game is just weird..
The latter half of the MSQ was a loveletter to FF4, and if you didn't play the game it kinda just fell flat. (I did play FF4 and loved it, but it must be said)
Balance, oversimplification and homogenisation are actively ruining people's enjoyment of the game. (Just look at the attrocious state of the tanks and summoner)
Reward structures sucked, and every piece of content we got died the same day it released except for savage and Ultimates.

EW did many things wrong.

Honestly, even with some nitpicky flaws, the story is good and engaging. At least when you compare to the other MMORPGs from the last 10 years. Even the patch storyline, I defnitely don't mind it. It seems like the 'special episode' from an anime franchise, between major seasons.

I feel that the issue is with the game systems (relics, difficulty, no field exploration, job design, etc...) and apparently many of these issues are tackled upon Dawntrail. Well, I only believe when I see, but at least I have some hope that DT will be objectively better than Endwalker when it comes to those things.

6.0's story was fine. Not amazing, but I enjoyed it well enough. Patch story pissed me off so much that I not only started drinking to get through it, I god damn swapped to lalafell. If the story's gonna treat me like a joke, then I'll be a damn joke.
As for the content... ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I've barely played this expac because there was basically no long-form content, especially since I've already done everything I've wanted to do in the past 2 expacs.
Pretty weird that they gave us two tome weapons this time, the hell was up with that? I don't even remember if I finished one.

I'm seriously hoping DT gives us Stormblood levels of content, I want to be drowning in things to do (though I may be biased since I started in SB), otherwise that'll likely be the end of my WoL's journey.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

It also has the side effect of not giving Estinien much to do; despite his joining the Scions being a big hype point going in, he's taciturn and not particularly scholarly, so when everyone is standing around talking, he's mostly leaning against a wall off to the side somewhere.

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Shadowbringers and this expac were the only ones I started to actually like Estinien in. He was historically presented as this epic, flawless, always-there-just-in-time-for-no-reason hero and something about him just really irked me. I hated every scene he was in. And he was in every. single. freaking. scene.

Until they presented him getting taken advantage of at a shopkeep.

I thought they did a better job with his writing lately. He's not flawless, he's not epic, he's a guy with a lance like the hundreds of thousands of other guys with lances in this world. He just didn't take a bath at the right time and ended up in a situation. But he's got a heart of gold, and I genuinely enjoyed spending time with him in these last patches.

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Honestly, even with some nitpicky flaws, the story is good and engaging. At least when you compare to the other MMORPGs from the last 10 years.

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I agree that it's better than any other modern MMO out there. I tend not to compare it to those, I compare it to its immediate predecessor, especially since they have taken to borrowing so much from it (and the single player games, for that matter). Sometimes it feels like the team fed the BG wiki into ChatGPT and then asked it to generate era-appropriate content for a Far Eastern area, and bam, we get Alzadaal Undersea Ruins as a braindead 4 man.

This team can do better.

This expansion did something I didn't know was possible. It took an enemy that has been on my radar since beta 2.0 and made me absolutely forget he existed by the time I was level 86... Just peak writing there, folks. And look a whole village of Jar Jar Binks level characters to take that underwhelming tension and flush the rest of it down the toliet. You had me following at the edge of my seat. A dude just killed himself to preserve what he believed in, and now I'm helping a space rabbit make clothes. Bravo...

Seriously, that's why I said Stinky Poo Poo in my post. This expansion solidified me in thinking Shadowbringers and Heavensward were flukes. Much like Empire Strikes Back and Andor are for Star Wars.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

Until they presented him getting taken advantage of at a shopkeep.

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That's actually the moment I started to hate him.

He is this awesome hero who travels the world alone and he has no idea how to deal with situations like that?

That was just out of character and bad writing.

Sure he must not be perfect and should have flaws. But keep it reasonable.

I agree. Endwalker is a fantastic expansion.

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Originally Posted by Tint

That's actually the moment I started to hate him.

He is this awesome hero who travels the world alone and he has no idea how to deal with situations like that?

That was just out of character and bad writing.

Sure he must not be perfect and should have flaws. But keep it reasonable.

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I thought it humanized him more than anything. He's good at fighting, flying through the air and lancing dragons, why would we think he's a shrewd businessman? Most of the time he's saving the world and getting free meals\rations\training with troops\sleeping barracks\etc.

Would we expect Lord Lolorito to be able to perform the feats that Estinien did? I wouldn't, he's not a fighter, he's a trader. He could spot a bad deal a yalm away. Being good at that doesn't mean it would be bad writing to depict him as bad at something else that might be peripheral to his trading, like say, defending the goods.

I thought it totally made sense that Estinien might not be so good at spotting bad deals.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

I thought it humanized him more than anything. He's good at fighting, flying through the air and lancing dragons, why would we think he's a shrewd businessman? Most of the time he's saving the world and getting free meals\rations\training with troops\sleeping barracks\etc.

Would we expect Lord Lolorito to be able to perform the feats that Estinien did? I wouldn't, he's not a fighter, he's a trader. He could spot a bad deal a yalm away. Being good at that doesn't mean it would be bad writing to depict him as bad at something else that might be peripheral to his trading, like say, defending the goods.

I thought it totally made sense that Estinien might not be so good at spotting bad deals.

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I headcanon Estinien as being on the spectrum, his special interests are fighting, collecting spears, etc, he isn't in his element in social situations, (which of course does not mean he can't socialise he of course can), so the whole scene in the market made perfect sense to me. Ask him to track,hunt and kill a monster, he's your man, he's gonna talk to you for days about his specific strategy he has, he's gonna deep dive you into his special interest about the best way to kill a dragon but ask him to haggle at a marketplace thats another matter which he wouldn't be accustomed to *in my headcanon*

Honestly Endwalker was lacking just kind of all over with odd choices on content like Island Sanctuary and the lack of rewards for criterion dungeons. I found myself more then once comparing it to what Warlords of Draenor was like way back in the day and that expansion made me leave WoW for an extended period of time due to how isolating it felt as an experience on the content end. It had nothing to keep people around and thus my friend pool largely diminished and the story just isn't good enough to keep me interested especially after I found myself with several misgivings about how 6.0 was presented and told. I still have two people that I log in for but overall I would say Endwalker greatly diminished my enjoyment of the game as a whole. I haven't even mentioned how my main class got obliterated into simplicity or how frankly easy former "grindy" goals became compared to prior expansions (All max levels jobs for example is a breeze thanks to how much exp is abound).

Overall I hope to see improvement in Dawntrail but I am not holding my breath on that one.

To be honest, I think people aren't harsh enough about Endwalker. Obviously Covid and a producer that was stretched thin between projects took its toll.

The MSQ was messy and all over the place. Thank goodness it didn't drag on for two expansions! It was nowhere near the quality of previous expansions, even ARR and fetching cheese was better. I was interested to find out what caused the end of the world for the Ancients, but bitterly disappointed to find out it was all because they got curious about the universe. Expelled from paradise for being curious - the ultimate stay in your lane story! There were some flashes of greatness in the msq I suppose - Urianger's meeting with Moen's parents was a beautiful scene, and the desperate Garleans harked back to our first encounter with the Domans, which was quite moving. All the power of friendship stuff was tiresome though and the biggest eyeroll of all - fanservice Zenos at the end. I think the patch quests were better. Zero was intriguing at first, although that turned out to be a power of friendship story all over again.

The other major disappointment was Criterion dungeons. A great opportunity to introduce a midcore challenge for smaller groups, but instead we got a normal and two savage difficulties instead. There really was no midcore content at all. It's not surprising so many people drifted away. The relic was a very boring tomestone grind too - couldn't we at least need to do Variants? Or go do some old content or something different?

It all got off on the wrong foot with that two week delay (another disappointment for idiots like me who took time off) and never really recovered (remember the lottery bug too?). The launch of the OCE servers somewhat made up for things - a very generous move from SE and I thank them for that (my main is on Ravana). Otherwise, I can't wait to see Dawntrail on the headers and title screens so I can forget Endwalker ever happened.

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Originally Posted by OlafQuintessa

All the power of friendship stuff was tiresome though and the biggest eyeroll of all - fanservice Zenos at the end. I think the patch quests were better. Zero was intriguing at first, although that turned out to be a power of friendship story all over again.
...
Otherwise, I can't wait to see Dawntrail on the headers and title screens so I can forget Endwalker ever happened.

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I agree, but I overlooked it so hard because we are starved for new "Scions". I'm really starting to get tired of the old team, we lost members that never got replenished, Zero and the Satrap were most welcome additions to the trust pool (even though we probably won't get to keep them). I didn't appreciate the railroading they did, either - why bother asking me which Scions we should go get if you were going to make the decision for me? And then to add insult to injury, have Alisaie yell at me about it all the while I'm screaming at the screen "you were literally my first choice!"

Not to mention, every time the twins are off screen for an extended period of time, I always harbor the hope they will finally grow up. And every time, I'm disappointed. I don't care how long-lived elezen are, this pair should be fully grown by now.

*sigh*. I, too, just want to forget this Shadowbringers DLC ever happened. I feel like it's given me so many negative views of the game.

It really feels like they accidentally struck gold with 4.3->5.3 then tried to force EW to be “ShB 2.0” without realising that ShB worked because it was fully self contained in norvrandt and they could build the first’s lore up to work within the story, when they tried to replicate it on the source they ran into pesky lore conflicts from 1.0–>4.3 and most of them just got resolved in a terrible way

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

i think the "impact" was lessened because until Bahamut's wings burst forth from Dalamud we had absolutely no idea (I think) about what was going to happen so it was a big shock.

Whereas for the Final Days we had already witnessed a preview via the Shadowbringers storyline so we knew what to expect when it started happening.

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True enough in terms of viewing it from a R/L perspective.

However, in lore, I feel that something everyone in the story referred to as "The Final Days" should've been more 'apocalyptic' than an event referred to as a 'calamity'.
Because in terms of the impact on Eorzea itself it does seem that the Dalamud/Bahamut calamity left more damage, had a greater (negative) impact, and left longer-term consequences then the so-called 'final days'.

I don't think Endwalker is *that* bad. I don't even think it's bad. I think it's mediocre. The problem with that is that this game has shown me that it can do better than that with Heavensward and Shadowbringers, at least when it comes to storytelling.

I liked a lot about Endwalker, but I definitely have my criticisms. I think EW can best be summed up as "good ideas, poorly executed." Varient/Criterion Dungeons and Island Sanctuary as examples--things that I like conceptually, but fell short in practice.

EW's main scenario was a jumbled mess with poor pacing and too much reliance on convenience and happenstance to advance the plot. The story up to 6.0 had gotten so big and unwieldy, and I have the feeling the writers just wanted to wrap everything up in a hurry so they could move on to something new. There were a lot of loose, unconnected threads that needed to be tied up, and there wasn't a good way to do it without a dose of "because the plot needs it to happen." There were plenty of moments of high drama and tension, but too often they were undercut by a sudden shift in tone or someone coming to the rescue in the nick of time. Events that should have had long-lasting impacts ended up being hand-waved away. I also feel that the heavier themes that story revolved around required the WoL to have a personality and a voice, and the insistence that our characters remain more-or-less a blank slate had a negative impact on the narrative.

I don't like time skips in general, but I think a three-year (or so) jump into Dawntrail would be a good way to firmly put the previous story to bed so the new story can take shape without the baggage of the past (I have the opening CS planned out in my head and it's great, lol). I don't like the intro to DT we got in 6.5, so 7.0 had better really impress right out of the gate.

I think endwalker was great, most people who bash it are nostalgic for shadowbringers which was also great. Maybe even a little better.
I think we can accept there being two good expansions, yeah?

Even though this is a few months old post, my only issue with Endwalker (and previous story points) is that none of the fan favorites ever die and stay dead. This always makes the story less impactful and boring. Otherwise, I enjoyed the story.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

I think endwalker was great, most people who bash it are nostalgic for shadowbringers which was also great. Maybe even a little better.
I think we can accept there being two good expansions, yeah?

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Among everyone I've seen stream the game:
- Most think ARR is a slog, but not everyone hates it
- People like HW
- People are mixed on Stormblood
- People generally like Shadowbringers
- People generally love Endwalker

That said, I generally found that ARR base story wasn't bad, but I wish the 1.0 story had been incorporated proper and not simply "lost to time". When they started bringing back the characters from the 1.0 opening video in post HW, I was like "wait, please tell me they are going somewhere with this." Had to wait for Shadowbringers.

Endwalker I feel tried to tie up the all the dangling threads that were introduced ever since the opening 1.0 cutscene. There are TWO nods to this, one in post shadowbringers when Elidibus makes it happen in the first, and the second time when the EXACT scene is used on the trip to Sharlayan. So I was a lot more excited to see where it went, but:
- I called a lot of the plot beats in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker because I had played 1.0
- The only part of Endwalker that I didn't call was the Zodiark fight (Which I had expected to be the final fight) and the Zenos fight at the end.
- The "they're building an ark aren't they?" was immediately telegraphed because of the Nyunkrepf Ark, which I had been questioning ever since I saw it on the 1.0 map and it's appearance in Stormblood.
- As soon as Thancred disappeared I was like "This is episode 45 of Sailor Moon."

The best part of Endwalker was the closed time loop with Elpis that was telegraphed in Shadowbringers, but really started in 1.0. I'd love to know if this was always the plan or it just coincidentally worked.

I love timey wimey stuff and to see how they chose predestination loop (that elidibus literately spells out) rather than getting the player's hopes up that they could avert the final days by ... oh changing Emet-Selch's mind.

I could understand how people maybe are tired of the Scions. I get that. They want to move on to another book rather than see the author write another chapter with everyone still keeping their plot armor, there's no stakes.

The story of endwalker is that the devs of 1.0 used Elpis, the devroom to design creatures for the game. But one dev couldnt stand to see rejected concepts thrown away to never exist. He looked elsewhere, up in the stars at other video games, but found only video games that had died. Heroes of the storm, starcraft, FF11...

The 1.0 devs desperately insisted that 1.0 wasnt dead despite the harsh truth... but our lord and savior Venat-p saw a way forward, to save the game even if it wouldnt be recognizable as 1.0 anymore.

You will not believe this, but way back in ARR 10 years ago, I always joked that the ascians were trying to bring back 1.0 and i was right xD

The problem I have with EW is that it was an expansion that went against those who played for years but are not hardcore.
The biggest criticism is the monotone one and done content and the feeling of having nothing to do.
It simplified and casualised so many things to cater to the casual players that those who liked grinds and mid core content were left in the dust.

The story was fine for me (hiccups here and there but fine) but the postpatch story was horrible for me and the alliance raid demystified the 12 without giving anything meaningfull for the story back.

I be honest, given yoshidas interviews and comments that direction would be our future if not for the internet criticism from some streamers.

EW didn‘t know for whom it was made and it shows in my opinion. It tried to be for everyone and to be players first mmo but it fell flat and made no one really happy or unhappy. It was just… there

Thinking about it. EW and the path to DT feel like they grew arrogant or placent after Shb brought so many new players and the positive reviews..
It seems like they thought they could do no wrong because of all the tearful msq reactions to the msq in Shb and players would be all over for the new direction. They forgot though that a good deal of players wants to actually play the game and were surprised by the criticism.

At least in my opinion.