Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

FOREWARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS

I know there are a lot of people hating on Endwalker because of the numerous technical issues SE has been having due to their crappy servers, which has in turn resulted in a huge portion of the player base being unable to even play the game. This post is not about those technical issues; instead, it is a critique of why I personally thought that Endwalker was only "meh" overall for other reasons.

Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks
Endwalker introduced a lot of mechanics that were completely pointless and did nothing to further the story but instead just dragged out the number of hours of "gameplay" in this expansion. These include the "guide this NPC around" quests, "stalk this NPC" quests, and "follow this NPC" quests. I realize that iterations of these mechanics have been present in quests in past expansions, but it felt like there were numerous of these quests in every single zone in Endwalker. Normally, you could just mount up and run over to the next spot, or even use the aetheryte. However, in Endwalker, you now have to stick with a slow NPC and walk/run across the map on foot as part of the MSQ. I think the best example of this is when you're body-swapped in Garlemald and, at the end of that quest, you literally have to crawl across part of the map before you finally trigger the cutscene. Another good example is when you're in the lower part of Labryinthos and have to go around and find 8 NPCs. "Gameplay" like this was tedious, unnecessary, and not "fun" whatsoever (mainly because it was so easy that it was almost impossible to fail any of these quests, yet still wasted time). It didn't feel like I was playing a game, but rather doing a chore. I'm not sure why SE decided to suddenly add a bunch of crappy mechanics like this. For many players, they can barely even get in to play the game due to the horrendous queues, and when they do finally get in, they get to spend (waste) a lot of their time doing filler content like this, which is completely disrespectful to players' time.

Endwalker also saw an increase of the Eulmore-type areas (e.g., the Garlean subway camp and Radz-at-Han) where you're annoyingly prevented from attuning to the aetheryte. This made a little bit of sense with the Garlean subway camp from a story perspective, but not Radz-at-Han, where you almost immediately come into the good graces of the folks in charge.

SE has also added new "achievements" like mounts and fashion pieces that effectively require you to do 4,000+ FATEs each. How about instead of creating rewards that incentivize people to do hundreds of hours of mind-numbingly boring content (which is what FATE grinding is), SE actually comes up with some fun, new content?

Too Much Doom and Gloom
We've previously fought the Cloud of Darkness. Now we have to fight Zodiark, who we know is darkness (after all, we’ve been told that repeatedly up until now, and his trial is even called "The Dark Inside" and drops the Lynx of "Eternal Darkness"). It can’t get darker than that, right? Wrong. Finally, we have a character (Meteion) who has basically come to embody despair and hopelessness. Having to lose all of the Scions in order to get to Meteion was extremely tedious, and the “goodbyes” were a waste of time because you know that you’re just going to bring everyone back anyway thanks to the new superpower that Hydaelyn gave to you. Anyway, we finally get to her and do her dungeon. And then she goes full emo and we have to fight her again as a trial. And then we have to fight Zenos as a solo instance. Oh wait and then Zenos goes SSJ and then we have to fight him again as another solo instance. As much as I liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the ending of the Return of the King was really long. Like, you thought it was over, but then it just kept ending. That's what the end of the Endwalker story felt like, but worse. While Shadowbringer left on a high note, I was just hoping that Endwalker was actually finally over by the time I got to the end of it.

If they really wanted to make the "final days" feel meaningful, I'm sorry, but they needed to permanently kill off (at least) one of the Scions (like they did with Papalymo, for example). However, because we have the Trust system, we know that they're not going to kill any of those characters because then that system wouldn't make sense if we could go back and run dungeons with now-dead characters. Knowing that everyone was "safe" really killed any sense of peril and thus weakened the story a lot, in my opinion. I feel like they should've made Urianger transform into a blasphemy in Labryinthos when he was lamenting the loss of Moenbryda - this would've shown us how dangerous the "final days" actually are and that nobody is truly safe. Instead, you have one guy whose business goes poorly and so he turns into a blasphemy and in turn starts a chain reaction in Radz-at-Han, but then when anyone that matters seems sad or in despair, nothing happens. They had a huge opportunity to make us be like "ohhh boy things just got real," but that moment unfortunately never happens.

Dumb Dialogue
The whole Garlemald arc was pretty dumb. You have to deal with these emo Garleans who are so dumb that they can't see the difference between their invading other countries and trying to force their Garlean culture upon them versus us trying to just drop off somefood and CE. It’s like the difference of China invading Tibet versus a country sending some humanitarian aid in the form of supplies to a country ravaged by war. Alphinaud, who's supposed to be the smart one, is suddenly too dumb to point this out when confronted with this rhetoric by the legatus - it almost felt like what they did to Tyrion Lannister or Varys during the last season of GoT (i.e., made these supposedly smart characters suddenly bumbling idiots). Yes, I get that the Garleans were subject to non-stop propaganda and thus kind of in a nationalistic "cult" of sorts. But they doesn't change the fact that Alphinaud's response to them was extremely weak.

Speaking of dumb characters, when you get to Omicron portion of Ultima Thule, you spend a while running around doing quests and it’s 100% obvious that this is Omega’s home world. After spending a while there, G'raha is like “I think that this may be Omega’s world.” Like, no duh? How did you not notice that the moment we stepped foot on this island and saw the level checkers? It was sad and frustrating seeing even the former Crystal Exarch being portrayed so stupidly.

Conclusion
I really, really wanted to like Endwalker – I truly did. I’m fortunate enough that I get to play during times when there’s not a lot of congestion, so I can’t really complain about the wait times like a lot of folks on these forums. Parts of the story were really good and compelling. However, many other parts (I’d daresay the majority) of the story moved at the pace of flowing molasses and were simply not very interesting. As a result, my overall experience with respect to Endwalker was that it is an okay-ish expansion (with some absolutely amazing music).

EDIT
Because some people are claiming that I must have used a story skip as well as skipped all of the cutscenes in Endwalker in order to feel this way, no. I have not used a single skip. I played through the entire MSQ (on multiple characters, actually) and got all of my classes to max level prior to Endwalker. I have also done every single side quest in the game (i.e., no more "!"s on the map in any zone, including Endwalker zones), so I'm used to tedious and annoying quests. Those are okay if they are relegated to optional side quests, but they really hurt the story if they're part of the MSQ.

*Gives OP sword and shield*
You're gonna need these, maybe.

The garlean thing was clearly showing the propoganda that want on in garlemald, which is a real thing that happens in countries IRL

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Originally Posted by Phaty

The garlean thing was clearly showing the propoganda that want on in garlemald, which is a real thing that happens in countries IRL

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Strikingly so. I very much appreciated it. An empire that wants everything to be considered simplified, combined under one banner for the good of mankind. Can't see where they possibly.. went wrong.

The doom and gloom aspect is true indeed, but I think it has its significance and delievered some type of message, I believe.

Agree to disagree. Although I did feel the pacing was off at certain points, I think the overall story being told as well as the extremely memorable moments (Estinien getting roasted for being gullible, Urianger getting teased for his outfit in Garlemald, etc) really brought the whole thing to life. It felt like a complete story, and the montage of worlds at the end was something I didn't even know I wanted until I saw it.

Endwalker is plagued with the same problem as Stormblood; trying to tie up too many storylines in too little time and trying to do too many things at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Phaty

The garlean thing was clearly showing the propoganda that want on in garlemald, which is a real thing that happens in countries IRL

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Perhaps on the part of the legatus, but what really irked me was (as I stated above) the fact that Alphinaud was too stupid to offer any sort of retort. He just clenches his fist and is unable to explain how the Garlean invasion of Eorzea is different from us providing supplies.

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

Endwalker is plagued with the same problem as Stormblood; trying to tie up too many storylines in too little time and trying to do too many things at the same time.

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They could've cut out a bunch of the "filler" quests where you just waste time walking around (especially those that I mentioned above) and the pacing wouldn't have been half as bad as it was. There was no reason to limit your character's mobility in Endwalker when they have generally not done so in the MSQ in recent expansions.

Stormblood was generally bad for different reasons, in my opinion. In Stormblood, you basically had to to do the exact same storyline twice. Oh no! Doma is in trouble. It needs to be liberated from some baddies who are led by an evil female character who is a native of the area turned bad (Yotsuyu). But wait! Ala Mhigo is also in trouble. It too needs to be liberated from some baddies who are led by an evil female character who is a native of the area turned bad (Fordola).

Calling the Garleans 'dumb' for refusing the aid of their enemy since conception is a bit flippant, don't you think?

The Legatus had a point - warring states don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts, regardless of what you and the contingency believe. The offering of aid carries and implicit expectation that the Garleans who accept will cooperate with their 'liberators,' which is a hard thing to sell after all of the things the alliance - and especially the WoL - have done to them. In a way, it's a predatory proposition - they are in no position to refuse, and if they do, then they will starve and freeze to death. Whether they were wrong in the war is irrelevant at this point.

That's not even talking about how utterly terrifying it must be to see the WoL in their presence. Having heard the things the WoL and alliance has done to Garleans (and then multiplied due to likely propaganda), how could you possibly trust them?

Skipped reading the post almost as fast as I skip cutscenes

I think your takes are quite valid, but I took things very differently. While they were overused I mostly loved the escort and stealth quests in the MSQ because they gave me a much closer experience to the story than just running to orange zone after orange zone.

I knew the whole time we'd be getting the scions back, but that didn't undercut the sentiment for me in the ending. I also really liked the Garlean zone stuff, I think it really captured the themes of struggling to move on. They were blatantly stupid as fuck that is true, but in a way I found very human rather than just plot stupid. (There is a bit of plot stupidity though, I felt like Hades and Hermes in Elpis reacted to Meteions report very strangely given the circumstances.)

Absolutely agree on Ultima Thule and Omega. It was obvious from the outset. The same is true of the Moon and Y'shtola revealing the rabbits benefactor is the forum. Obviously the devs know we can figure it out so if there needs to be a moment of 'revelation' at least let us bring it up since we've been aching to point it out since getting to those zones.