I have no clue what this imaginary fan base is that kickwars mentioned is. People are just laid back when playing this game because it is (or at least was) pretty easy and simple to just log in and do stuff. No one is under any disillusionment that the way endwalker ended made sense, but I also don't take RPG stories all that seriously to begin with. I mean we basically went through an entire expansion that alluded to time travel being very bad, then had this over the top insane warp to the past that would have assured the world would no longer be the same that we came from. But predestination is apparently a thing now so I guess the whole concept of free will is now being put to question?
Also going to point out that FFXIV has forever had a pattern of feast and famine with the content. The beginning of the expansion is where most of the content ends up dropping, and then they drip feed bits and pieces going forward to hopefully keep the entire thing from withering into the grave. When they moved to longer patch cycles it made the famine portion of the cycle more pronounced, so people are burning out faster from getting stuck on the perpetual grind content. Sticking a small piece of lore at the end of a weeks long artificially bloated grind does not a game make. Arcades mostly had difficulty spikes to make people pay more money to get through the content. In this game we just have time gated weekly allowances that require players to cap something every week like a part-time job. Well, that and savage which is really an artificially elongated amalgamation of difficulty road bumps and crafting / gathering grinding to the floor.
