What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

What I prefer about NG+ is that I don't have to mess around with any side content if I don't want to I can just run the MSQ.

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Alts tend to be my preferred method of reexperiencing the story. Usually the alts have some RP-related restrictions applied to them as to make it so I dont end up pivoting to my main class (at least early on). Really only major thing on alts that tends to be a pain is leveling specific jobs to 30 for PvP since I do prefer running that on something I like.

I'm trying my darnedest to muster the gumption to do a replay to see the HW dungeon reworks firsthand, but every time I start up the game I just wind up closing it.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I'm trying my darnedest to muster the gumption to do a replay to see the HW dungeon reworks firsthand, but every time I start up the game I just wind up closing it.

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Both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward dungeons had very little changes outside some of the bosses' mechanics becoming more consistent with Shadowbringers and Endwalker design.
They changed Toto-rak completely but the other dungeons' layout and trash mobs had almost no changes.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

Both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward dungeons had very little changes outside some of the bosses' mechanics becoming more consistent with Shadowbringers and Endwalker design.
They changed Toto-rak completely but the other dungeons' layout and trash mobs had almost no changes.

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I'd have to kinda disagree,

They really did change entire schema for some of the boss fights. There's this one in Stone Vigil which was the Dragon fight with the whirlwinds and the Bertha cannons, that's gone now. They have a new boss in a new location but only includes the whirlwinds. They moved the cannon portion to Stone Vigil hard where its not in a boss fight anymore but rather groups of trash mobs with no whirlwinds.

Caught me off guard the first time I went through it again because I instantly turned right for the Boss fight and am standing in this ruined room while the rest of the party moved on and I'm going... wait this used to be a boss fight here.

And its not the only one like that' there's a lot of the old dungeons that had fun parts in them like that which have been completely removed. I just wondered... why... because they weren't overdone or that incredibly difficult to figure out. And the characters are so much stronger these days I find it hard to believe they'd have become some kind of unpassable challenge.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

I'd have to kinda disagree,

They really did change entire schema for some of the boss fights. There's this one in Stone Vigil which was the Dragon fight with the whirlwinds and the Bertha cannons, that's gone now. They have a new boss in a new location but only includes the whirlwinds. They moved the cannon portion to Stone Vigil hard where its not in a boss fight anymore but rather groups of trash mobs with no whirlwinds.

Caught me off guard the first time I went through it again because I instantly turned right for the Boss fight and am standing in this ruined room while the rest of the party moved on and I'm going... wait this used to be a boss fight here.

And its not the only one like that' there's a lot of the old dungeons that had fun parts in them like that which have been completely removed. I just wondered... why... because they weren't overdone or that incredibly difficult to figure out. And the characters are so much stronger these days I find it hard to believe they'd have become some kind of unpassable challenge.

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I imagine the biggest reason is because gimmick mechanics like that were doing opposite of preparing people for actual content later down the line. ARR and even some specific examples from HW really experimented a lot before settling into a sort of a pace by Stormblood, hence why Stormblood dungeons were barely changed. That's why a lot of fights feel much more generic, they actually represent "low difficulty, early tutorial" fights much better now.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

I'd have to kinda disagree,

They really did change entire schema for some of the boss fights. There's this one in Stone Vigil which was the Dragon fight with the whirlwinds and the Bertha cannons, that's gone now. They have a new boss in a new location but only includes the whirlwinds. They moved the cannon portion to Stone Vigil hard where its not in a boss fight anymore but rather groups of trash mobs with no whirlwinds.

Caught me off guard the first time I went through it again because I instantly turned right for the Boss fight and am standing in this ruined room while the rest of the party moved on and I'm going... wait this used to be a boss fight here.

And its not the only one like that' there's a lot of the old dungeons that had fun parts in them like that which have been completely removed. I just wondered... why... because they weren't overdone or that incredibly difficult to figure out. And the characters are so much stronger these days I find it hard to believe they'd have become some kind of unpassable challenge.

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The boss is still there. The room being redesigned and redesigning the boss is the same thing. It's in the same location. They changed boss mechanics to focus more on the type of design that is consistent with Shadowbringers and Endwalker instead of the more gimmicky mechanics that ARR and HW bosses had.
I've revisited most of the ARR and HW dungeons, and there wasn't any reduction of bosses, just redesigned fights and arenas. They're still 3 bosses in the same locations.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

They moved the cannon portion to Stone Vigil hard where its not in a boss fight anymore but rather groups of trash mobs with no whirlwinds.

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The cannons in Hard were always there. See MTQ's guide from nine years ago.

I wanted to come back to this topic once i finally played through 6.5 and 6.55 and give my thoughts on the story. The stories have been so bad that i played through Eden for the first time and skipped all cutscenes and only skim read it. Played most of 6.5 and skipped all the game would let me. I know that Eden is not EW. I just can't stand another "Darkness is bad but light can also be" cringe fest and all those bad tropes FFXIV writing is drenched in. I started to hate the story. FFXIV - all of it - is the worst story i have ever witnessed. It's full of boring clichès, padding, making up stuff as you go, stakeless battles etc. I don't want to start a fight. I just realized FFXIV at it's core embodies basically all the tropes i hate in fiction and wears them as a badge. You can like it and i hope you enjoy it. At least i finally realized there is nothing for me there.

Got to reading TVTropes again, and going through a few of them in relation to XIV's narrative in Endwalker, I feel like these all apply but weren't invoked as I recall.

Ancient Conspiracy

"Sometimes the ancient conspiracy is neutral or a force for good, such as an Ancient Order of Protectors, but more often than not it is evil (when it is a force for good, it often still does extremely evil things because its members believe they serve the greater good). Occasionally (primarily in series by writers who understood earlier source material such as the Illuminatus! trilogy), the obvious ancient conspiracy is later discovered to be an offshoot of an even more Ancient Tradition which has lost its way; in such cases, the real Ancient Tradition may provide some veiled and ambiguous assistance to the protagonists, though they will remain aloof themselves."

Knight Templar

"It's important to note that despite being villainous within the context of the story, Knights Templar fully believe that they are on the side of righteousness and draw strength from it and that their opponents are not. Trying to reason with one isn't much good either, because many Knight Templar types believe that if you're not with them, you're against them. Invoking actual goodness and decency will have no effect, besides making Knights Templar hate you and demonize your cause as the work of The Devil. After all, they are certain that only their cause is noble, and anyone who stands in the way is at best a deluded fool who needs to be "corrected", or at worst an evildoer who needs to die. And doing so is not even Dirty Business (except sometimes, for how much it makes them suffer, having to hand out all this justice)."

Moral Myopia

"Moral Myopia is where some in-universe group’s moral standard is hypocritical because the morality of an action depends entirely upon who's doing it."

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Moral Myopia

"Moral Myopia is where some in-universe group’s moral standard is hypocritical because the morality of an action depends entirely upon who's doing it."

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Moral Myopia is an ever present trope you can find inside of the story, ranging from regicide, patricide, to other words that may or may not rhyme. Back in the older expansions, these points were at least addressed but in more current stories, this is not something you see as often.