I think Golbez had potential. Perhaps he still does. As things currently stand though, his character motives are to just...die I guess? lol The writers are kind of retreading Ultima Thule, at least at the moment.
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Strangers in paradise is an incredibly badly written piece of travesty with its only saving grace being that it is funny in a bad way but has good gameplay systems. Re-using skeletons is a non-issue, how dare they use something that would actually cater to the monster they want to make...it's called being resourceful...why make something new when you can repurpose what you have. Sigh please people ignore this troll because it's borderline sad now.
I actually agree with the OP on alot of the stuff, except the scions. I like the scions they have been my brothers in arms for a long while. Yes there is long periods of time where they arent doing anything Alisae for almost 2 full expansions to name one. But I dont mind them that much I wanted some of them to die off but they were not courageous enough to let them die or the main villian for that matter.
The Abuse of the Four Elemental Archfiends is disturbing to me tho. Not only did they get the order of their power completely wrong on Barbariccia and Cagnazzo just forcing 2 of the 4 into dungeon fights was worse enough for me. It leads me to believe they intend to have us either fight Golbez or chase him into the next expansion. Also the Moon thing where he is at is just foreshadowing of a Zeromus fight thats planned. Its not a hard read. We will get a new lunar subterrannae dungeon in 6.4 or 6.5. But Its just feeling like they have a direction but dont know how to push the further.
Lets take Gaia, I really didnt enjoy her because I hate angsty teenager story lines as it is. But Thanks to Ryne being a well written character for ShB MSQ I was able to tolerate it. Zero is just written as an edgy teenager again and done badly without balance. We also see that she is forcefully being rushed as well with her failing to protect a villiage all alone as the reason that she see's herself as not useful. No one else bothered to protect that villiage. We have no backstory as to why she was alone.
Lets be real here. The Writer for ShB is either working on two projects at once, or is washed up. Which is hard to believe after ShB was so successful and one of my favorite expansions period. So I think we are stuck with this lackluster expansion until FFXVI is released and Yoshida gets his full team back because we know its the main driving factor for why the content has been so little and problematically written. I love this game so much but I am just dissappointed with how everything turned out. The slow paced ShB set up for Endwalker with Lunar Primals(Very lackluster) and the mess of Pacing for the Climactic ending of the saga mixed with a jumbled mess of lore for the 13th that should very well be its own expansion as it is. I miss the old ff14. It cant just expect ShB to keep the hype going people are getting tired of it. I read more and more each day.
The writer for FFXVI went to that project after 3.0. Ishikawa and Oda are not a part of the FFXVI project and are only doing FFXIV.
FFXVI's development was still going on when ShB was made, but people loved that expansion so FFXVI can't really be used as an excuse here.
As for the Four Fiends, the follow-up story to EW needs to end by 6.4/5 so that 7.0 can start fresh without dangling threads left over. That leads to needing to get it done sooner rather than later and there's only enough room for 4 trials in post-expansion content and one of those will almost definitely be Golbez. Besides, didn't the Four Fiends not last very long in FFIV anyway?
I for one have been shipping Sadu and Cirian since Stormblood. Sadu is actually one of my favorite NPCs and would like to see her become his 'wingmate' with the WoL (Never get with Magnai...) perhaps to find his love or perhaps teach him that he dose not need to find a beloved to be happy/a leader. That would be a nice story I think.
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Alot of this doesn't make sense. How can they have a direction yet not push forward when...we are and have been moving this whole time? Also why do power levels matter when this isn't FF4? The writers can make whoever they chose to be stronger or weaker tbf.
Next I don't see how Zero is an "edgy teen". She's a voidesent dude. Is she suppose to act like king mog or something? And how exactly is she being rushed? We got to see a glimpse into her past that parallels what happened in the present. This time she's learned from it and is beginning to question more things. It's not just "what is a friend " anymore.
It's odd you speak as if EW wasn't and hasn't been a success when numbers would factually say otherwise. Has the content actually been little or has it just been things not interesting you? Has the writing actually been problematic or is that just an opinion. That's the thing with all this. I miss aspects of old XIV but wholesale I wouldn't want to go back to old XIV