A game for 4 year olds

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

For the record, I did actually quite like them. I was wondering if you had made anymore since the last time I watched one.

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Wait, what videos were these? I never saw a thread like that.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Then by all means why don't you grace us with a rewrite of your own? One that preferably avoids the terrible mishandling of grief, depression, and genocide in Endwalker.

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That's completely unrelated, but okay. I'll admit I have a failing of taking the bait.

But here's the thing: I think the story is mostly fine, so I don't need to do a whole rewrite fanfiction to 'fix' it. Most of what I'd change are more editors' notes than full alterations. But sure, I'll toss them out. For the entire live game up to now, in fact.

A Realm Reborn: A tough one, since ARR has the difficult job of introducing a bunch of the world, but not really enough screentime to make any of it appealing, so there's not a lot of rewriting you can do without losing something important. I'd probably just have a whole editing pass to make sure we lose the weirdly out-of-place stuff that's more a relic of 1.0's tone (let's maybe not put down a slave uprising in Copperbell, and lose about 80% of the sexual assault references). And a special little idea of mine: include an 'Ala Mhigan's theme' for Raubahn, Ilberd, and some other relevant Ala Mhigan NPCs, that includes the Stormblood leitmotif.

Heavensward: Let's not kill Ysayle this time; she was killed for a bad reason, and would have interesting value to the story if she were still around for later parts of it. This has the side-benefit of making the Warring Triad storyline's attempt to sell Regula as a respectable person less terrible. Other than that, Heavensward's fine.

Stormblood: This one's really hard, because the main problem with Stormblood is baseline structural: it's essentially the exact same story told twice, once in Ala Mhigo and once in Othard. And yet, just removing either would cause enormous problems both in planning the future of the game (both Ala Mhigo and Othard introduce hugely important players) and in player appeal (people like both those places a lot). My best idea is basically to spice up the Ala Mhigan areas and make them more distinct from both each other and Yanxia. Let's use the existing Ala Mhigans and make each zone a reflection of where they grew up; have the Fringes be more religious to reflect Widargelt and the Rhalgr fanatics (since their holy sites are still around there), have the Peaks be where Raubahn's from and you can see both the principles and places that shaped him and perhaps the places where he feels he failed them (so maybe it's the most like Ul'dah, but you learn that's because Raubahn influenced Ul'dah rather than the other way around), and the Lochs is where Ilberd's from and it's still a simmering powder keg with regular outbreaks of violent resistance cells. That ARR change of introducing an Ala Mhigan theme also pays off here, as it's more immediately clear during the Imperial-occupied anthem that Garlemald co-opted the anthem rather than getting 'why is the Garlean theme playing everywhere' responses.

Shadowbringers: So I don't like Emet-Selch, which means he's the main thing I'd change here. But unlike Aveyond I actually respect other people's tastes and opinions, so while I could make more dramatic cuts to him, I don't really want to. Right now the angle I think I'd take is twofold:
A: Let's not have him be the founder of Garlemald. It cheapens Garlemald that their turn towards imperialism was from an external actor rather than entirely human choices, and it causes huge problems for Emet that the guy they're trying to paint as a tragic figure who had to make heavy, abstract but difficult choices also did extremely non-abstract terrible things that rightly shouldn't be lumped in with them.
B: A bit of a weird pitch, but: we're swapping the Warrior of Light and Hades. The WoL fight takes place down in Amaurot, and perhaps it's a mystery as to who actually built the place (Elidibus can deny it was him in the ending), meaning that Amaurot gets to make its pitch by itself rather than being tied so heavily to Emet. Emet still gets to throw down and go down in 5.3, where this time it's him that's the last Unsundered standing; he delays a bit before going even bigger on the angle of 'you failed to save the First by my reckoning, I'm gonna smash the First myself' that he does in the game anyway. In all honestly, this is mostly so that 5.0 ends in a more thematically consistent way than it currently does; it really bothers me that The Lightpocalypse Expansion ends in a completely incongruous figure of darkness, so let's give it the light-iest ending it can have.

Endwalker: I've thought about this, because I don't think Endwalker is perfect, but I think there are two ways to make it better. I've posted about them here before actually.
1. Lop off Elpis' start through to when Meteion freaks out; while I respect the direction of falling action, it completely obliterates the momentum the game has to go from Thavnair's apocalypse to 'land without problems full of pretty people'. Meteion freaking out means the place isn't entirely free of complications, but is still a drop in momentum, and still gives space to introduce all the relevant players, just in a more interesting context. It also means things are a little rushed, so people don't get the idea that we entirely influenced much of anything; we can still have scenes with Venat where she learns what's up, but things never really slow down enough for her to plausibly have more than a vague idea of who we are or why we're here. This frees up a bunch of space in the quest runtime, so let's instead give that to Garlemald to expand on that camp of indentured slaves off in the south that the MSQ sorta completely forgets about after introducing them. I used to think Ultima Thule could use the space too, but the Omicron questline does that just fine.
2. I don't have a problem with a lot of the things Labyrinthos' revisit does, but it doesn't do a lot with the space it's allocated, and while there is a ticking clock in the background, it's WAY in the background. We need essentially a 'Team Rocket' to raise the immediate stakes without raising the actual stakes. So I propose that the Illuminati break in to steal parts for their own spaceship/bunker, since they're exactly the type to already be working on that. Also, the Alexander questline is conspicuously near-absent in the 'celebrate everything you did' sequence.

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Originally Posted by Kazemon15

Wait, what videos were these? I never saw a thread like that.

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Also, the videos are over here! The last one I posted here was the one on NPC jobs (which I experimented with putting in General Discussion since it was less lore-ey). Since then I've done one on FFXIV's crossovers, a series on job lore (that's currently just the ones that started in FFI), and one on 'stuff we know about Allag that isn't the focus of any major stories'.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Also, the videos are over here! The last one I posted here was the one on NPC jobs (which I experimented with putting in General Discussion since it was less lore-ey). Since then I've done one on FFXIV's crossovers, a series on job lore (that's currently just the ones that started in FFI), and one on 'stuff we know about Allag that isn't the focus of any major stories'.

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Ohh I love analysis videos. I'll be sure to check them out. I hope I can make out most of it, since I usually follow ones that have closed caption (I'm actually hard of hearing) but will check them out sometime! Thanks.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

The issue is that you're accusing people of lying about an incredibly common human experience of lost a loved one or family member.

Most people in the world have in fact, experienced grief or loss in thier life. Why on earth would anyone ever need or want to lie about something like that? You might as well accuse someone of lying about having parents, or going to school.

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Most well adjusted adults don't wield it like a cudgel against people they disagree with over the themes Endwalker tried and failed to address in a sensible way. I do not believe that certain FFXIV players are not beyond resorting to extreme emotional manipulation along with nonsensical lies in order to paint me and others as villains. When I witnessed this extremely bizarre behavior, I called it out.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Rewrite

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Your rewrite does not have my seal of approval, though there are parts I will commend you for. I object to the removal of the darker elements that underlie ARR's world along with Ysayle's sacrifice, despite my appreciation of her character. I did however enjoy your ideas for the Stormblood section. I think the Shadowbringers section makes sense, we can agree to disagree on which characters we like or dislike. Your proposed solution for Elpis is partially helpful, though issue of Endwalker's themes and whether you would change them/express them via different means remains unaddressed.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

If you think a story is being written for four year olds, but frequently misunderstand it anyway, maybe it's time to reach a four year old's reading level.

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As I said earlier, the FFXIV community seems to have a lot of Rick and Morty fans in it. If you don't love the story, you're apparently too stupid to understand it. FFXIV's story isn't that complex, it's quite easy to understand.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Then by all means why don't you grace us with a rewrite of your own? One that preferably avoids the terrible mishandling of grief, depression, and genocide in Endwalker.

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As much as Cleretic is talking about of her anus, you probably could have come up with a better response. Telling someone who loves the story to give us a rewrite isn't really a good point. What are they supposed to significantly rewrite if they're happy with how it came out? Sure they can do little tweaks and edits here and there, but not anything groundbreaking.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Meanwhile you continue to belittle, talk down to, make fun of several people.

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I'm of the opinion that once a stone has been thrown by another person, you're free to throw a stone at them if you so choose, and that the person who threw the first stone doesn't have the right to complain. Everyone I mentioned earlier has thrown a stone first, be it here in this thread, or in others. Besides, I have yet to call someone a Russian sympathizer for liking a fictional nation that isn't real like Kazemon did, nor did I say someone was less than human like Aveyond allegedly has, (I didn't see it if it did happen) so I'm not losing any sleep from struggling with the thought of whether I'm a terrible person or not.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

And even though you say you might not agree with some people you never are seen doing so.

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I've disagreed with Aveyond in the past if that's what you're referring to. He's not perfect and not every post he's had has been a good one. (See above)

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Originally Posted by SannaR

All you ever seem to do is attack people so why should anyone want to even try to have a discussion with you.

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If you're one of the people who aren't worth having a discussion with, it would certainly seem that way.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The guy you're defending had no better response to a 10-sentence-long post I made so he called it an essay, said he gave it only a "passing glance" and then tagged the thread with "essay writer's guild". But sure, everyone else is the problem.

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Aveyond's nowhere near perfect, and I don't claim that he is, but I'd rather have a discussion with him than with most of the other people in this thread. The only reason I'm even here was because the thread itself was interesting.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Most well adjusted adults don't wield it like a cudgel against people they disagree with over the themes Endwalker tried and failed to address in a sensible way. I do not believe that certain FFXIV players are not beyond resorting to extreme emotional manipulation along with nonsensical lies in order to paint me and others as villains. When I witnessed this extremely bizarre behavior, I called it out.

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^ This. Love or hate Endwalker, I don't care. But if you're not a trustworthy source, don't be surprised when people don't believe your stories, be they true or not. I'm not going to take what you have to say as truth if you've given me reason not to, especially with how rabid the community can be when it comes to defending the game. If me not accepting your words as truth offends you, then that's your issue to sort out.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Your rewrite does not have my seal of approval, though there are parts I will commend you for. I object to the removal of the darker elements that underlie ARR's world along with Ysayle's sacrifice, despite my appreciation of her character. I did however enjoy your ideas for the Stormblood section. I think the Shadowbringers section makes sense, we can agree to disagree on which characters we like or dislike. Your proposed solution for Elpis is partially helpful, though issue of Endwalker's themes and whether you would change them/express them via different means remains unaddressed.

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I mostly agree with your assessment. The ARR and HW sections weren't great, but SB was pretty good and SHB is alright. I'm not sure if I'd personally want to swap WoL and Hades but it's an interesting enough idea. For EW, the Elpis part is alright but I think the answer to fixing Labyrinthhos is to just make it a lot shorter. Put more of Labyrinthos in the lv 80 quests, remove the unnecessary questline split, have Thavnir happen after Labyrinthos 1 is done,(it feels like they only did the split because SHB did) and have Labyrinthos 2 be much shorter. This would fit the story better in my opinion.

Awesome you called me disingenuous and thus not worth the time to discuss things with. Yet I want to say that you from the start at least the first time I saw a post of yours you were attacking someone right off the bat. Just because you didn't like how someone was disagreeing with someone else. Which most likely wasn't in a harsh way. The person who was disagreeing. So according to you everyone should have a right to throw stones at you. And again when your first interaction with someone is you seeing them attack a person for just disagreeing with someone why would anyone want to interact with that. Don't play victim or whatever. You tend to go around labeling people things just as much as others do. Or are you going to tell me you've never called someone a Fora Knight amongst other things?

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Awesome you called me disingenuous and thus not worth the time to discuss things with.

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I didn't specifically call you disingenuous in the post you're referring to, I said that I disliked the lore forum in general because of how many people in it are disingenuous. I did say that you're a performer in this circus and thus not worth having a discussion with because quite frankly, you're not.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Yet I want to say that you from the start at least the first time I saw a post of yours you were attacking someone right off the bat. Just because you didn't like how someone was disagreeing with someone else.

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You can say the same about nearly everyone in this thread depending on what post of theirs you first saw, whether you chose to misinterpret it, and/or whether you chose to remove the context from the situation (such as whether or not that 'disagreement' was truly simple 'disagreement'). This includes you.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

So according to you everyone should have a right to throw stones at you.

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Not really how it works as I wasn't the first to have thrown a stone but if you want to, go ahead. I've made it clear in the past that I don't care if I'm popular with the part of the community you're a part of. Your scorn means nothing to me. Having seen what earns your praise, it's better to be hated than loved by you and yours. If I'm disliked by your part of the community, it probably means I'm right.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Or are you going to tell me you've never called someone a Fora Knight amongst other things?

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The term 'Fora Knight' was Senti's creation and I used the term a handful of times (after having Senti explain the meaning of the term in private) before not using it again for the past few months. It definitely suits certain people on the forums but I personally don't use it anymore as it doesn't really mean anything to anyone who doesn't know its meaning, and I don't feel like explaining it every time. As for other labels, I only call people things when the shoe fits.

To be clear, nobody ever wielded thier deceased loved ones like a cudgel. The exchange actually went something like this.

Avenyond: "People with whom Endwalker resonated with have not actually experienced meaningful loss in thier lives."

Several posters: "That's not true, I experienced loss in my life and related very much to the story of Endwalker. It's messed up that you would say something like that."

Avenyond: "You are all clearly just lying and trying to gaslight and emotionally manipulate me."

To any outside observer, this is utterly deranged behavior.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

To be clear, nobody ever wielded thier deceased loved ones like a cudgel. The exchange actually went something like this.

Avenyond: "People with whom Endwalker resonated with have not actually experienced meaningful loss in thier lives."

Several posters: "That's not true, I experienced loss in my life and related very much to the story of Endwalker. It's messed up that you would say something like that."

Avenyond: "You are all clearly just lying and trying to gaslight and emotionally manipulate me."

To any outside observer, this is utterly deranged behavior.

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Also to add, he not only said it wasn't meaningful loss, but said they didn't grieve "like a normal human being", which was dehumanizing anyone who didn't "fit" into what grieving should be.

I derive no satisfaction from a story where characters die only to come back to life and preach to me about their forge ahead nonsense while unjustly maligned groups are brutalized in spectacular fashion. I should think that this is readily understandable, as it is to those I speak to outside the world of this game’s community, whose defenders somehow claim this story gripped them so strongly, for reasons that have no logical basis.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Your rewrite does not have my seal of approval, though there are parts I will commend you for.

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I assure you, not having your seal of approval is the greatest sign I could've gotten that my thoughts on how to improve the game have merit.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

I'm not sure if he called someone 'less than human' (didn't see it if he did), if he did I think that's a little much, but I'm not going to judge him for that when there's been far worse in this thread from other posters.

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Here's his post that you missed that you're defending without actually knowing what was said. It's on page 24, post #238:

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I’ve told people in real life about how EW tried to pull off its messaging. They were not appreciative of it. I do not believe that the people who defend its messaging have experienced loss in their lives or if they have they definitely didn’t process it like a normal human being.

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My own strongly worded post was deleted by a mod completely so I won't repeat it, but know that my incredibly fresh, barely-over-a-year experience of losing my father to cancer the day before my wedding anniversary self was ready to say a lot worse than what I said here prior to Aveyond. I don't give a rat's tail what you do or don't think about the story, you can like whatever the heck you want. I don't have to agree with you, but at the very least I'm not going to say that someone didn't process grief like a normal human being because I like Endwalker's story, themes, and how cathartic it was for me to cry it out after my loss. You don't have to agree with that. We probably won't. I'll respect your opinion if you think I'm at least a normal human being, but if not you've lost any shred of respect I may have tried to hold out for those that I don't see eye to eye with, or at the very least won't degrade, put me down, or belittle me for liking something you don't.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I derive no satisfaction from a story where characters die only to come back to life and preach to me about their forge ahead nonsense while unjustly maligned groups are brutalized in spectacular fashion. I should think that this is readily understandable, as it is to those I speak to outside the world of this game’s community, whose defenders somehow claim this story gripped them so strongly, for reasons that have no logical basis.

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It's the ditching of one expansion then cramming the last ten years of what Yoshi personally liked that brought us here. Other than subtly saying that the players of FFXIV who love the game are the worst human beings on the planet and deserve nothing but pain and suffering for enjoying something at all, I don't see how he thought most of this was okay. It's like he played all the most well received RPGs of the last decade and picked the moments players like most but completely failed to grasp the buildup to them. Meteion should have been in the story from the beginning and be introduced as early as, I'd say, the end of ARR but we would learn more about her, Hydaelyn, and the dark crystal that I'm pretty sure was supposed to be Zodiark over the expansions.

I hate talking about it because it makes me sad. The game was full of ways the story couldn't be screwed as hard as it did, but Yoshi was like "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that" to all of it. Squadron, jank as it is, would have solved the immortal Scions issue because you could run all content with your fully customizable party. Hell, give it the trust system. Of course there would need to be drawbacks to encourage playing with other players, such as less EXP or less items.

There's more to post, such as updated Hall of the Novice that would teach large pulls, but I don't have the energy or passion to do so. Like I said, it makes me sad they went the easiest possible way out. Now I just do whatever content I feel like doing, such as crafting the entire Riniscita series without using macros (it's faster and slightly more engaging). Don't care much for variant dungeon despite being a flame chad because best queen's story for me ended when she told Varis to shove it. Too much sympathy and too little certainty, that's how I would describe Endwalker at 1 in the morning when my shift starts at 6 am and I have a doctor's appointment after work.

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Originally Posted by Kazemon15

Yeah I noticed the Russian thing too...and considering how he thinks Garlemald is the greatest thing since sliced bread...all his posts and line of thinking totally makes sense... he probably worships his country's leader's feet and wants Russia to expand just like Garlemald does and basically sees everyone else as "savages", just like Garlemald does. All this makes perfect sense when he has these unusual "standards" of people who enjoy the story and the idea of wanting female characters who are yes-men doormat bootlickers.

I don't want to call him a you-know-what sympathizer but...it all points to that direction and puts him in a very bad light now that the dots are connected. His posts about loss also makes sense to this too, considering he probably thinks most of the posters here are sub-human...

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Why are you trying to make Aveyond sound even more based than he is?

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Originally Posted by rainichan

My own strongly worded post was deleted by a mod completely so I won't repeat it, but know that my incredibly fresh, barely-over-a-year experience of losing my father to cancer the day before my wedding anniversary self was ready to say a lot worse than what I said here prior to Aveyond. I don't give a rat's tail what you do or don't think about the story, you can like whatever the heck you want. I don't have to agree with you, but at the very least I'm not going to say that someone didn't process grief like a normal human being because I like Endwalker's story, themes, and how cathartic it was for me to cry it out after my loss. You don't have to agree with that. We probably won't. I'll respect your opinion if you think I'm at least a normal human being, but if not you've lost any shred of respect I may have tried to hold out for those that I don't see eye to eye with, or at the very least won't degrade, put me down, or belittle me for liking something you don't.

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It'ss the worst thing about the approach to moderating that these forums do: they can insult, belittle, dehumanize and hurt everyone they disagree with as loudly as they want, because the only person who's going to have action taken against them is the one that breaks hard enough to swear at them.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

(Suggested reworking of MSQ)

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I kept writing something like this as well, but I kept axing it because it was long.

A sort of TL;DR for me would be to rework the main gripes I have that I’d rework entirely is Endwalker. Unfortunately most of my ideas would be quite drastic and lead to a different direction.

1) End the Ascians with Shadowbringers. They are done. There wasn’t a need for further send off aside from needing a villain to drive us towards fighting Zodiark. This could easily just have been a Zenos so mad at losing to us that he’s hell bent on destroying the world. None of that “my dear friend” nonsense. If there are any remaining, leave them as unaccounted for and possibly a returning trouble maker in way later expansions; possibly as overlords on other shards. With Zodiark destroyed, this could open so many potential plot threads: they could just be about ending the world/revenge against us personally. They might try to find other ways to recreate their perfect world (cloning?). They might learn that even if they do bring their friends back, they won’t really be them.instead just primals like Elidabus.

Hell, some could even decide that since they can’t have the old world back…they’ll just live in this one becoming neutral or even cordial with us.

2) Make the entiiiiirrree plot about getting to the moon and defeating Zodiark. Leave the sound for another expansion and for the love of god, don’t make it a “whoops, ascians goofed” Meteion. I’m beating a dead horse with how many times I’ve said: just make it a cosmic world-ending horror Lavos monster. Even better if it’s already on the planet underground (go go Hollow Earth!)

3) Getting to the moon- we have telescopes, let us see that there is an ancient crashed ship, and a structure on the moon. We have to find a way to get there. Maybe get info from Azys Lla. Maybe leading to Elpis.

4)No time travel; rework Elpis to be told in flashbacks and make the area ruined/overgrown a la Laputa (anime). Automaton groundskeepers and all. The entire point would be to find a semi-functional ship that needs my boy Cid and tech from our various allies. Mammets from Sharlayan, rare metal from Ul’dah etc. not a “oh yeah lol, we have a ship already just need gas!”.

Could even need help from the Garleans via ceureleum fuel + engine.

5) No need to fight Hydaelyn, at all. Have her help in the fight to destroy Zodiark and just let her die with him.

6) No dynamis, no power of feelings, no “oh yeah primals that don’t enslave you teehee”. End of Days need not be despair monsters, but actual awakening hellspawn or some such.

6) Island sanctuary is about actually building a settlement for refugees, not some weird mammet industrial factory thing…

7) No Ultima Thule. Final zone is the moons interior. Where Zodiark awaits.

…it goes on and on…and it would be a very different story… and it’s already too long so I’ll cut myself off here :)


And I get a lotta people wouldn’t really jive with me, and that’s fine!

That is probably a success point for Endwalker- it has a lot of people talking about it for better or worse.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

He seems to like this name, since his one female alt is named that way. A blondish elezen. Hmm is that some kind of self insert?

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It's normal for people to have OC/name that they're attached to. I have one that I made during middle school because I misheard a planet/star name, and fun fact, I still use it for my ffxiv username and one of my alts (used to). Not everything has to be self-insert. Don't be weird.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Aveyond's story even required making up someone random that came from nowhere with no prior build-up or mention at all in earlier content, with no support from existing factions inside Garlemald, and inventing new and contradicting rules of succession for them to take the Garlean throne. She is chosen by Gaius (who by the way is believed by the entire Garlean populace as Varis' murderer in the lore of the actual game) as "oh, she'll do" and just happens to come with baggage including being pregnant with the baby from a rebel leader and ex-lord of a province who just fought and beat back the Garleans to regain his country and is suddenly is A-OK with Garlean hegemony when he learns his baby momma is supported by the Scions for the Garlean throne.

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Okay first of all, that's kind of unfair. It's a rewrite but we're not allowed to create new character or add something to the lore? You might as well kill a big portion of fanfics on ao3. And speaking of that, I remember that EW does introduce us to a major new character with no prior build-up or mention at all, which is Meteion. And no, the morse code on CT isn't meteion.

Second, I admit that I haven't read Aveyond's rewrite in detail, but what you write here? It's way more interesting than what we got in ffxiv. Currently, the garlean is basically "some of them went to moon, some seek sanctuary in sharlayan, and the rest are just existing. Oh and most of their people died". Sure there's a chance that the devs might revisit garlemald again in the future, but I'm sure some people here agree that the chance is, and supposed to be, very small. Name issue aside, imo this summary of rewrite is pretty solid and a good plot hook. It kinda reminds me of FFXV Aldercapt (the empire guy)'s granddaughter story, and a little bit of lyse in it too. For a broken nation (or group) sometimes a symbol can give them strength, and this dutchess can become that symbol, that Garlemald isn't finished yet. With her relation with non-Garlean she might even become the reason as to why Garlemald will turn over new leaf in the future.

Of course there is still the issue of women not allowed to be leader, but this is written by the devs, I'm sure they can twist things so that it's okay for her to take the throne. And if it truly rub people the wrong way, we can flip their gender, not hard to do and won't even change the story that much.

I can't comment further as I haven't read the rewrite completely, but as I said previously, it got potential to create intriguing political drama. And dare I say it can also be a romantic drama too (two people from two warring nations? Having to choose between their people or their love? The struggle of convincing their people to stop the fighting? Sign me up!).

Now to a more sensitive topic, I'm guessing people have problem with some states depicted as being better under the Empire rule? As seen with Bozja, it's not too farfetched I'd say. We know that not all garleans are evil, as seen with Maxima and the Populares. Gaius is pretty respectable guy too, a shame that ARR can't exactly explore his chivalrous side. To make the Empire all evil is boring to me. And in real life, we do have people who think their nation was better when they're still under other nation's rule.


Honestly even if this was written by you or other lore people, I would still be very interested in it.

This back-and-forth discussion (argument?) with Aveyond is completely counterproductive. I mean, if you condense it, it comes down to this:

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'No, you are bad for trying to make us feel bad for liking Endwalker'

Honestly - the whole thing has become a bit of a circlesword (all edge, no point).

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

This back-and-forth discussion (argument?) with Aveyond is completely counterproductive. I mean, if you condense it, it comes down to this:

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'No, you are bad for trying to make us feel bad for liking Endwalker'

Honestly - the whole thing has become a bit of a circlesword (all edge, no point).

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Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'Endwalker is good and you should feel bad for not liking it'

There, fix it for you.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'Endwalker is good and you should feel bad for not liking it'

There, fix it for you.

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Okay - I'll concede that you may have some point there, the only real point within that being that Aveyond poured fuel on the proverbial fire with his implication that people who embraced the 'message' Endwalker was trying to put across are not normal.

Let's not "both sides" this. Aveyond went personal in an ugly way. He said that people are either lieing or they did not grief like normal humans because they did not meet his very narrow and, might I say, pretty niche, definition of a grieving human being. That is way worse than anything that people told him till that point. And that is if we put aside the baseless arrogance, the dismissal of others arguments ("I did not read you essay") and his usual behaviour that shows a profound lack of respect for others and really reminds of a petulant child.


And the fact that some of you defended him in this speaks volumes. So next time you try to play the card of "woe is me, such a victim I am, people are mean because I hated EW" remember that you defended much worse behaviour. So yeah, that victim spiel won't work.

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Originally Posted by CheshCa7

Let's not "both sides" this. Aveyond went personal in an ugly way. He said that people are either lieing or they did not grief like normal humans because they did not meet his very narrow and, might I say, pretty niche, definition of a grieving human being. That is way worse than anything that people told him till that point. And that is if we put aside the baseless arrogance, the dismissal of others arguments ("I did not read you essay") and his usual behaviour that shows a profound lack of respect for others and really reminds of a petulant child.


And the fact that some of you defended him in this speak volumes. So next time you try to play the card of "woe is me, such a victim I am, people are mean because I hated EW" remember that you defended much worse behaviour. So yeah, that victim spiel won't work.

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To be clear, I'm not defending him as such. If anything, I think he crossed a line a in a big way with his attitude toward anyone who doesn't agree with his mindset, and I think he's made things worse by trying to pull the 'I'm the victim in this' card too.

I do still maintain that this discussion is, ultimately, pointless though - the thread was clearly created to discuss the story around the Omicron quest chain and managed to derail into yet another discussion about Endwalker as a whole. There are already numerous threads (one with a post count in the 700+ range) to discuss that and, personally, I'm tired of how consistently threads created to discuss X end up as Endwalker/Hydaelyn genocide/how much the writing sucks soapboxes lately.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

To be clear, I'm not defending him as such. If anything, I think he crossed a line a in a big way with his attitude toward anyone who doesn't agree with his mindset, and I think he's made things worse by trying to pull the 'I'm the victim in this' card too.

I do still maintain that this discussion is, ultimately, pointless though - the thread was clearly created to discuss the story that the Omicron quest chain and managed to derail into yet another discussion about Endwalker as a whole. There are already numerous threads (one with a post count in the 700+ range) to discuss that and, personally, I'm tired of how consistently threads created to discuss X end up as Endwalker/Hydaelyn genocide/how much the writing sucks soapboxes lately.

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Oh, my message was not towards you. And I completely agree that every thread being derailed towards the same complaints is tiring (and I read most if not all posts from that gigantic thread. Gigantic but more than half the pages there are the same old posters with the same old opinion, but I digress). Unfortunately this topic was doomed to go that way I mean, if you look at who the OP is and how inflamatory the first post and even title was formulated, this thread was not going to be a civilised discussion about the Omicron quests. If you go back to the first page you see the usual suspects with the usual complaints ("story is for children", 'Yoshi P is ruining FFXIV', 'who is this story for???!!!11'). So what happened next was only natural.

Save actual moderator action on Aveyond (which I think is unlikely for the reason I mentioned), changing the subject to something at least very slightly nicer to talk about...

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I kept writing something like this as well, but I kept axing it because it was long.

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I can't say I like all of your ideas on this (making the entire story 'a grand journey to kick Zodiark in the grill' feels way too expected, it'd be a boringly typical finale), and I'm not really sure what your version of Endwalker would really be trying to say as a story beyond 'sometimes you need to kill an evil wizard's dark god', some of this is genuinely neat and I hadn't thought of it before. I'd long ago ditched the notion of 'what if Elpis was just an Echo flashback' as kinda the most dull way to explore the information it gives us, but instead exploring Elpis as sky ruins with a big Ghibli vibe would actually do a whole lot to fix that, at least to a point where I can't immediately call it a downgrade. Of course it kinda strands Pandaemonium, and we won't know until 5.4 what their actual aim is for it enough to find a fix for that.

I'm not against these rewrites/edit notes as a concept, just as long as we recognize that A: there's a line of detail after which it's just fanfiction, and while fanfiction is fine we should recognize it for what it is, and B: those ideas are quite often worse than what we got in some way or another. Sometimes extremely so. Turns out the people paid to write the game tend to have thought about how to present its ideas and story more than we do, who'd have thought?

I like that Endwalker is imperfect in ways that let me think about it like this (it's WAY harder to 'improve' the other expansions even if I consider some of them worse, as you probably saw from my attempt) and consider ways it could've gone differently, it's a fun exercise that I don't get with a lot of other media I enjoy. But yeah, I'm not about to pretend my ideas are inherently better than theirs; hell, there'd be a decent chance that if I did somehow get the Endwalker with all my desired changes, I'd actually like it less somehow. I mean, if you gave me the story outline without me knowing how it'd go, I'd have probably cut Quintus, and his scenes were some of my favorites in the entire game. And I DEFINITELY wouldn't have thought of the Omicron tribe, even though I love both it and all of its inspirations.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I'm not against these rewrites/edit notes as a concept, just as long as we recognize that A: there's a line of detail after which it's just fanfiction, and while fanfiction is fine we should recognize it for what it is, and B: those ideas are quite often worse than what we got in some way or another. Sometimes extremely so. Turns out the people paid to write the game tend to have thought about how to present its ideas and story more than we do, who'd have thought?

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Meanwhile, the “writers”:

What’s the lifespan of mortal races: Eh…I don’t know

Why are mortal races different when they all came from the same one: Well, like, miqo’te needed to hear really good and lalafells were under a lot of pressure I guess…

How much time has passed since 1.0 to Endwalker: Now that’s a rabbithole I don’t want to go into…Idk, how old is Y’shtola?

How did the Unsundered ascians escape: Well Emet was let go by Hydaelyn and the two others…Happened to be nearby idk?

What about the sundered overlords or black mask ascians: Wow guys you’re really paying close attention. Eh…They’re still out there, somewhere…

I’m drowning in sheer depth of the thought they have given to this story.

I just wished Endwalker was actually two expansions.
One focused on Garlemald and it's surrounding regions like in HW or SHB, ending with our fight against Zodiark on the moon.
Garlemald deserved more than a single zone and being off screened by Zenos.
Anima should have been a trial too.

I think Zodiark not being the actual final opponent was a good idea, but that plot needed more time to properly get us intrigued and set up that antagonist.

I would put Garlemald and the moon in the same expansion, and developped the moon as something more than the lopporits hideout and an unused ship.
Ideally, it would have an ascians "city" and they would be some of the enemies before fighting Zodiark.
I can imagine some patches showing how these ascians processed the death of their god and ambitions. I think it would have been nice to tie up the fate of the remaining ascians that way.

Then the final expansion would have focused more on Sharlayan, Thavnair and Elpis.
I think both these cities storyline are fine, but suffered from having our group constantly moving from too many different places.
I'm particularly dissapointed that Thavnair is just one zone and city. I would have love to have a reason to explore the island more.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

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I’m mostly with you, s’why I deleted it a few times- it just turns into fanfic and gets cringy…but still.

I think my ideal point of EW would have been a “we are all in this together, friends and enemies both”, so enemies are forced to work together to save the world…but that might fray quickly post threat..only to turn into cosmic dread. Cheesy as it may be.

I also do like the omicrons very much and the idea of finding a new purpose is appealing. I’d probably have put them on the moon (staging to take over maybe?)..I dunno. With the omicron quest I like Thule and Dead Ends more than I ever did via the actual MSQ.


I guess my ultimate gripe is, everything I was expecting the story to be just wasn’t there. We were handed a spaceship, the daddy drama was entirely unnecessary, Zodiark was just a giant “mecha”…

And maybe there is something to say about things being fresh or unpredictable, but I think there is also something to be said about setting the goal early ( “take ring to Mordor”) and that actually being the final goal, no sudden Scooby Doo reveal.

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Originally Posted by Thenightvortex

Meanwhile, the “writers”:

What’s the lifespan of mortal races: Eh…I don’t know

Why are mortal races different when they all came from the same one: Well, like, miqo’te needed to hear really good and lalafells were under a lot of pressure I guess…

How much time has passed since 1.0 to Endwalker: Now that’s a rabbithole I don’t want to go into…Idk, how old is Y’shtola?

How did the Unsundered ascians escape: Well Emet was let go by Hydaelyn and the two others…Happened to be nearby idk?

What about the sundered overlords or black mask ascians: Wow guys you’re really paying close attention. Eh…They’re still out there, somewhere…

I’m drowning in sheer depth of the thought they have given to this story.

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I agree the lack of thought put into the Sundering is evident and they just make it worse every time they seemingly make up answers on the fly, but we do have answers to most of the non-Sundering questions.

They do know, and have stated in the lorebook, how long the races live for – basically human rate, Elezen 10%-20% slower ageing, and Viera with their weird "young for two centuries" thing (though I don't think we know what happens after that, unless Ivalice lore tackles it perhaps).

And we know how time works – or rather, how we're supposed to pretend it doesn't work. We are officially not counting time since the beginning of the game, and it is always "five years since the Calamity" however many years-worth of adventure we fit into it.

Y'shtola has to be somewhere around 32 – she was 17 when she left Matoya's cave and has been involved with Scion business for at least 15 years since (going by 1.0 flashbacks).

And even if they have plans for the remaining Ascians, do you seriously expect they'll tell us about them? Deflecting off a future potential plot point is going to be the response whether they have a detailed plan or nothing at all.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

It'ss the worst thing about the approach to moderating that these forums do: they can insult, belittle, dehumanize and hurt everyone they disagree with as loudly as they want, because the only person who's going to have action taken against them is the one that breaks hard enough to swear at them.

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Me choosing to not believe someone who has given me no reason to trust their words after all I’ve seen from EW’s defenders is not the same thing as the outright hostility. This is because I am literally not acting hostile towards these people, I am skeptical for reasons I’ve already explained but I shall do so again. I do not feel anything for these people. My expression is a neutral one. I scrutinize and am highly skeptical of everyone I encounter online until I have sufficient evidence to believe their stories. Otherwise I keep a high guard. It would not be the first time an MMORPG player lied about their circumstances.

Perhaps they should have considered that people would not automatically trust their emotionally charged way of trying to win an argument here before deciding to overshare. Again, this isn’t the sort of behavior that I’d expect from mature adults. From my perspective this is not socially appropriate behavior. You may feel free to disagree. I genuinely do not believe that Endwalker has done anyone any favors in terms of helping them process grief, rather it seems it’s given people unrealistic ways of doing so. From the state of the afterlife lore in this game to the stunt the Scions pulled in Ultima Thule with their fakeouts, I found it incredibly disrespectful that they then tried to attach this to the themes they chose.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

I'm referring to stuff like this. It has nothing to do with whether or not you like or dislike Endwalker. A good portion of my friends like Endwalker and I have no problem with them because they're not disingenuous and don't say/do things like calling people Russian sympathizers if they like Garlemald. I've sadly had the displeasure of interacting with the people I've listed and each has earned my distaste for them by being intellectually dishonest.

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Where were you when he called me offputting by simply liking how cute the new beast tribe is? Or when he said that people that liked Endwalker never knew loss or are handling it wrong? Why is it that Kazemons post is so bad, yet he can bascially insult everyone who disagrees with him, including saying something about their personal grief. What about being called a four year old just because one enjoys the questline of a beast tribe?

But I guess we who like Endwalker deserve this while anyone who doesnt like it, is a victim.

Dont complain about people slinging mud when you guys are bascially having a mud war against others the whole time...

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Originally Posted by Kozh

It's normal for people to have OC/name that they're attached to. I have one that I made during middle school because I misheard a planet/star name, and fun fact, I still use it for my ffxiv username and one of my alts (used to). Not everything has to be self-insert. Don't be weird.

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The self insert was about the character not him as a person...he bascially has a alt character who is a dark blonde elezen with that name which he then uses for the main NPC in Garlemald. It feels to me like he self inserted his own playable character (not himself...) into the rewrite of the story.

Edit:

In the end I dont understand why Endwalker is so horrible. Aveyond wants to have destruction, death and seemingly no real happy ending.
Well if you like the opposing factions like Garlemald or the Ascians, isnt that what you got? Garlemald got their whole city destroyed, with a huge amount of the people death. We did not get a happy ending for the Ascians or the Ancients either. Instead of being able to change their fates, it happened again. All of the "heros" on that side are death.

I mean that seems to be a perfect ending for a very grim dark story? The only thing missing is the WoL being able to join that faction like you do in WoW. If you could this would have bascially be a expanion full of huge losses.

But I guess it comes down to not wanting happy ends for those characters you dont like, while wanting one for those you do. Not very dark imo. I will never understand how one can be so angry about the scions surviving while also saying that we should have created a split timeline where the Ancients survive. That would mean that one person was able to change the bad outcome for millions of lifeforms. I would have nothing against such a story plot. But I also love happy endings.

Anyway I am looking forward to the last quest of the beast tribe and what they will do with the unsolved plot point. I really hope we get another section of Elysium in the style of the missing ones.

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Originally Posted by RukoBoshi

I just wished Endwalker was actually two expansions.
One focused on Garlemald and it's surrounding regions like in HW or SHB, ending with our fight against Zodiark on the moon.
Garlemald deserved more than a single zone and being off screened by Zenos.
Anima should have been a trial too.

I think Zodiark not being the actual final opponent was a good idea, but that plot needed more time to properly get us intrigued and set up that antagonist.

I would put Garlemald and the moon in the same expansion, and developped the moon as something more than the lopporits hideout and an unused ship.
Ideally, it would have an ascians "city" and they would be some of the enemies before fighting Zodiark.
I can imagine some patches showing how these ascians processed the death of their god and ambitions. I think it would have been nice to tie up the fate of the remaining ascians that way.

Then the final expansion would have focused more on Sharlayan, Thavnair and Elpis.
I think both these cities storyline are fine, but suffered from having our group constantly moving from too many different places.
I'm particularly dissapointed that Thavnair is just one zone and city. I would have love to have a reason to explore the island more.

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I think the change came with Shadowbringers, as that expansion seemed to be the plan change not Endwalker, assuming the goal to be entering the ruins and Emet's recreation of Amaurot. I think if Shadowbringers didn't happen, we'd still have Emet as the villain of 5.0 but we'd explore Thav and Garlemald and maybe Corvos and Werlyt, only to end up in the last zone which would have been very similar to The Tempest. 6.0 would have been a harder pivot to a bigger Sharlayan, with Elpis, Thule, and the moon relatively the same.

To gain Anima, would have required the sacrifice of Titania or Innocence. On the other hand, I think those that hated the way Elidibus was handled would have gone along with it better if he did his drama over fallen Garlemald.

But to further my real point here, the current iteration of Shadowbringers and Endwalker are reactions to the complaints about Stormblood and the success of Shadowbringers. We saw many people complain they didn't want huge zones like Ala Mhigo if they wouldn't be fleshed out well, so Shadowbringers gives us a lot of different zones that were very much different than every other zone and they adapted the story to this change. They then saw the success of this decision in Shadowbringers only to hear the community claim they wanted more Garlemald and more Elpis in Endwalker and didn't think the story adjustment to having very strong different zones adjusted to the story went well enough.

To give a smaller example is Viera. They added the race because of overwhelming player request but Hrothgar as well because that was their original plan. Giving us the situation where we had female Viera and male Hrothgar. And although they have listened to give us the gender swap for these races, the community hurt the lore and plans of the Bozja storyline because we didn't have a female Hrothgar to take on the role of the queen of Bozja.

We should be very careful about what we ask for. They do listen to us, but we should be very specific about what we want to see and not want to see. We should also not get caught up in meaningless arguments here either, as we are just hurting the direction of the game because we are letting unchecked feelings guide the direction of the game instead of well thought out criticism and suggestion.

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Originally Posted by RukoBoshi

I would put Garlemald and the moon in the same expansion, and developped the moon as something more than the lopporits hideout and an unused ship.

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You forget that the moon is, first and foremost, Zodiark's prison. A prison that Fandaniel had to crack open using an aether-based weapon that required so much power that he created towers across the world to draw the aether from the land itself.

The Garlean solution provided by the story is still the better one if you are not looking for a War and More War expansion where the Garleans are solidly defeated in a battle that would be going on throughout.

Although a 'city of Ascians' sounds cool, there are narrative problems with getting there and remaining alive as every single Ascian discovers the Warrior of Light on their turf.

The movement between Sharlayan, Thavnair and Elpis during the leveling process is no more jarring than the movement between zones in any of the previous expansions.

Frankly, I consider the ending of a conflict that has been ongoing for over 10 years was handled with a lot more compassion toward the losing side than they deserved.

"The World's a Stage" the actor said
Come curtain call we'll all be dead.
"It isn't true!" the soldier cried
A bullet hit, and then he died.
The people wept, the angels sang
The World went off without a bang.
The actor gasped, and then was gone
The world's the world.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Okay first of all, that's kind of unfair. It's a rewrite but we're not allowed to create new character or add something to the lore? You might as well kill a big portion of fanfics on ao3. And speaking of that, I remember that EW does introduce us to a major new character with no prior build-up or mention at all, which is Meteion. And no, the morse code on CT isn't meteion.

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Meteion was meant to be a "come from nowhere" character by the writers and apparently they had that idea going back to 2019 after ShB released. I don't agree with that or Meteion's everything but at least she shows up at the end of the expansion under the context of us going to Elpis to find the cause of the Final Days.

Aveyond's fanfic expansion just starts with Gaius randomly calling up a random Garlean noble's name who normally couldn't even be in consideration for the throne and Thancred immediately leaves the party to go hunt her down and rescue her because she's Aveyond's super special OC and everything in his rewrite from the beginning revolves around her.

People are allowed to make their own fanfics as long as they admit they're fanfics. But the difference is that Aveyond treats his rewrite as objectively better than what we got so his writing is going to be looked at with a different level of criticism.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Now to a more sensitive topic, I'm guessing people have problem with some states depicted as being better under the Empire rule? As seen with Bozja, it's not too farfetched I'd say. We know that not all garleans are evil, as seen with Maxima and the Populares. Gaius is pretty respectable guy too, a shame that ARR can't exactly explore his chivalrous side. To make the Empire all evil is boring to me. And in real life, we do have people who think their nation was better when they're still under other nation's rule.

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I have no problem with that and the Bozja storyline also talks about that. But Bozja's capital was also accidentally disintegrated due to Bozjan rule so I don't think you can say they were better after the Garleans came. The field records go into the fact that the new Bozjan government will encounter resistance from those who liked the way it was before better so it's not ignored. But the rebellion was made with the specific purpose of letting Bozja's people determine their own path forward

We don't know the extent of the popularity the Populares had, but most of them who were active with their discontent ended up getting gassed so I don't think they were very influential or powerful unless Varis was willing to kill a large chunk of his government, though I wouldn't be surprised. The reaper storyline has the Lemures flee Garlemald after a failed assassination attempt on Solus for steering the empire into the ground. So there are "good" Garleans from the perspective of Eorzea, but it doesn't mean that the empire as a whole isn't a bad thing just because there are some good people and some of the provinces end up better than they were before. Besides the act of conquering and all the death and destruction that comes with it, all provincials are treated as second-class citizens compared to pureblood Garleans and get conscripted and sent to the other side of the empire to fight their expansionist wars. Miqo'te and Roegadyn are assigned the surnames "captured" and "fat" respectively. In Landis, magic-using knights were hunted down and killed after the country fell. Religion is banned and culture is erased wherever they go.

The problem with them goes all the way up to the leadership and the creation of the empire. As we all know, they were created by an Ascian, who cared nothing at all for the Garleans themselves, and kept expanding and molding the Garlean culture to be what it is with the goal that it would cause strife and set up a Calamity, as he had done with the Allagans before. He had such little regard to his creation that he left a parting gift of a civil war behind and even he was surprised with how violent and destructive it was. His successor's goal was to destroy the whole world over and over and in the 8UC timeline his first attempt at a Calamity destroyed Garlemald there too.

The issue with suggesting that some of the provinces are better off under Garlean rule is that not even the Garleans are better off under Garlean rule. Even with Bozja's capital melted and Rabanastre bombed to rubble, the Garleans have probably ended up being the most badly affected by the Garlean Empire and now exist as refugees in their own homeland.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

You forget that the moon is, first and foremost, Zodiark's prison. A prison that Fandaniel had to crack open using an aether-based weapon that required so much power that he created towers across the world to draw the aether from the land itself.

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I didn't forgot about that, i also didn't forget that they Ascians were seen standing on the moon multiples times like they owned the place.
They were at least confortable enough to come and go whenever it pleased them, so it would make senses for them to be there to me.

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The Garlean solution provided by the story is still the better one if you are not looking for a War and More War expansion where the Garleans are solidly defeated in a battle that would be going on throughout

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I can agree with that, we know that they didn't want to tell more war stories, and i doubt they would want to tell more revolutions stories against Garlemald like in Stormblood.
I still think they could have created a story focusing on this nation and it's regions.

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Although a 'city of Ascians' sounds cool, there are narrative problems with getting there and remaining alive as every single Ascian discovers the Warrior of Light on their turf.

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I don't think it's impossible to tell that kind of story. After the death of the unsundered, i think many ascians would be dispirited and wouldn't even oppose us anymore.
Like Elidibus in Endwalker, they could accept that everything is over, while some others ascians would hate us and be against us.

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The movement between Sharlayan, Thavnair and Elpis during the leveling process is no more jarring than the movement between zones in any of the previous expansions.

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True in a way, my problem here is that we don't spend a long enough time in these regions. I'm fine with moving from place to place in connected areas, like the regions around Ishgard, because the storyline is still connected to the main hub.
Sharlayan and Thavnair are their own practically their own storyline that don't intermingle that much. They would gain to have time to develop their own plots.

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Frankly, I consider the ending of a conflict that has been ongoing for over 10 years was handled with a lot more compassion toward the losing side than they deserved.

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Despite feeling rush to me, i think they did a nice job handling the conclusion of a 10 year old saga.
I never had big expectations for Endwalker, because i feel Shadowbringers already ended the ascians plot in a satisfying way. I also loved SHB so much that i knew Endwalker wouldn't come close to it for me.

There's just a ton of details that i feel come from the fact that this expansion had to create a new plot since we lost the main antagonists in SHB and tie everything together. This is not an easy task, especially when you follow a game acclaimed like Shadowbringers.
Endwalker is just really good to me, but not amazing.

Maybe if people didnt spend all their time on the forum spewing word salad at people they didnt know, and actually played the game once in a while they'd see that OP is correct /shrug

Circling back to the original topic, I don't even think it is accruate to describe it as a story about a dragon "forgiving" an omicron. The point of the meal being shared is that it inspires feelings of nostalgia and builds a connection to a past that the dragon thought had been lost forever.

The idea of food being something that connects people to each other, and reminds you of a more pleasant past is actually a pretty common one in literature, and you can see it in everything from Pixar films to Tolkien. I wouldn't really describe a classic literary trope like that as "childish".

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Originally Posted by Lustre

Maybe if people didnt spend all their time on the forum spewing word salad at people they didnt know, and actually played the game once in a while they'd see that OP is correct /shrug

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You mean the people that contradicted OP with actual examples from the game and from the quests in question? Those people should play the game?

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Originally Posted by Lustre

Maybe if people didnt spend all their time on the forum spewing word salad at people they didnt know, and actually played the game once in a while they'd see that OP is correct /shrug

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Easier said than done. I can access the forum from my work PC between tasks at work. I cannot, however, play the game at work since A: it would be inappropriate and distracting and B: my work PC is just that - a work PC; attempting to run pretty much ANY game would likely melt it!

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Easier said than done. I can access the forum from my work PC between tasks at work. I cannot, however, play the game at work

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Prettymuch this. The angle some people take that "the forum is naturally the place for angry people because if they were happy with the game they'd be playing it" just doesn't ring true. For me, a forum is where I can keep (theoretically) enjoying the game with fellow fans when I can't be playing it or don't feel like playing it, but do feel like thinking and talking about it.

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Originally Posted by rainichan

Here's his post that you missed that you're defending without actually knowing what was said. It's on page 24, post #238:

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Ah, that's why I didn't see it. Because he didn't say you were less than human, he said you didn't have a normal human reaction. Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with his assessment, that's not the same as telling someone they're less than human. Is there another quote that you didn't link? If this is the only quote, it honestly sounds like people took what he said, stretched it thin to mean something else and got mad over that new definition. Which isn't surprising as I've seen this happen more times on these forums than I can count. (And I don't just mean the lore subforum, general discussion does this all the time too)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

It'ss the worst thing about the approach to moderating that these forums do: they can insult, belittle, dehumanize and hurt everyone they disagree with as loudly as they want, because the only person who's going to have action taken against them is the one that breaks hard enough to swear at them.

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If the rules say no swearing, and you're the only only who swears, then you're going to be the only one who gets moderated.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'Endwalker is good and you should feel bad for not liking it'

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Essentially, yes.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Me choosing to not believe someone who has given me no reason to trust their words after all I’ve seen from EW’s defenders is not the same thing as the outright hostility.

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Anywhere else on the internet, this would be obvious.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Where were you when he called me offputting by simply liking how cute the new beast tribe is? Or when he said that people that liked Endwalker never knew loss or are handling it wrong? Why is it that Kazemons post is so bad

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Because Kazemon's post calling someone a russian sympathizer for liking Garlemald is a lot worse than someone saying you're 'off-putting' for liking in-game characters. They're similar on paper but one is far more extreme than the other.

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Originally Posted by Lustre

Maybe if people didnt spend all their time on the forum spewing word salad at people they didnt know, and actually played the game once in a while they'd see that OP is correct /shrug

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I'm thoroughly convinced that there are actually two versions of FFXIV and different people are playing different versions of it with a completely different story. Maybe that's a bit of a conspiracy theory but it's the only way any of this makes sense.