The end of ARR will forever be the high-water mark for FFXIV, to me

No shade on expansions since. I loved Heavensward and especially Shadowbringers, Stormblood did some great world-building, I've enjoyed Endwalker (although it felt a bit fast-paced).

But honestly, ARR I think was just really firing on all cylinders towards the end, and that very final "event" remains *the* single most memorable beat in the story.

In fact, in a lot of ways, it feels like it was "the moment" the story really found itself... while at the same time, Heavensward slightly undermined the impact of those events.

I also really loved Revenant's Toll as the "end-game capital", it truly had that "Final Fantasy" feel. Especially with the crazy-looking sky, it almost gave off "Hollow Bastion" vibes from Kingdom Hearts, which again, just helped give it this alien, fantastical feel.

But also, I'm probably in the minority, but I feel like FFXIV has grown just a bit too "feel-good anime" in its general vibes. The good guys seem unstoppable superheroes, both in terms of literal strength of being veritable one-man armies, but also not really having to fear danger for anything short of godlike powers.

Which, it does seem like maybe we're *starting* to scale things back a bit? And I do look forward to the whole "slice of life" vibe of Dawntrail for a bit, I'd also like to see a bit more *weight* to the narrative a bit.

There's just nothing quite like experiencing that level of *shock*, of "holy crap, there's no way this is ACTUALLY happening right now?!?", it was just something that I've never experience in any other MMO.

No specific suggestions -- it's not like there's any characters I *want* to see die, or any major events I have in mind -- but just getting back to that point of feeling like there *is* a sense of danger for our characters. Some political intrigue, where a few bad guys in power can throw our "world" in turmoil, without resorting to "magic" or otherworldly power to do so.

I also wouldn't mind seeing more of some of the old City-State leaders again. Watching through some folks playing through segments of FFXIV for the first time, I think I'm always surprised how Pipin Lolopin (Raubaun's adoptive son, who helped rescue you from Ul'dah) didn't really amount to much. I'd still love to see him get some screen time, personally.

Either way, eager to see what Dawntrail has in store for us. Just hope it isn't *totally* "feel good" and isn't afraid to deliver some emotional gut-punches from time to time.

You know, on a small tangent... People talk about characters needing to die because we haven't had any real losses in quite some time, but that's odd to me. Why does a character need to die specifically? There are other consequences of loss that can often times be far more impactful, such as when Raubahn lost an arm. He didn't die, but the impact of the story at the end of ARR changed him as a character.

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Originally Posted by Terin

But honestly, ARR I think was just really firing on all cylinders towards the end, and that very final "event" remains *the* single most memorable beat in the story.

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I mean, to me, ARR was a great story. It was the story that drew me into the game. It had curious moments, happy moments, sad moments, deaths, deep moments, exploration, moments where you save people moments where you or your friends fail, etc.

It's not that ARR was bad, it's that all the expansions just surpassed it and I don't think I've seen anyone else hold the opinion that ARR was better than all of the expansions...

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I feel like FFXIV has grown just a bit too "feel-good anime" in its general vibes.

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I don't watch anime, so from my perspective, it's just become too Final Fantasy.

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The good guys seem unstoppable superheroes, both in terms of literal strength of being veritable one-man armies, but also not really having to fear danger for anything short of godlike powers.

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It's because in Final Fantasy games, there has traditionally been a danger that surpasses anyone's imagination threatening the world, that gets stopped by 4 scruffy-haired people journeying the world. So Yoshi-P wants to match the fantastical, world-ending threats from these games.

There is just one problem with that. In those games, once you win, it's the end of the game. In Final Fantasy XIV, it's not the end of the game. So you go into the next world-ending threat with a massive PDF document of your work history:

• Defeated reveered gods of the beast tribes for target practice, including Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Ramuh, Leviathan and a moogle king.
• Defeated the cause of the most recent calamity that killed thousands of people, Bahamut.
• Defeated senior Garleans including Gauis van Baelsar.
• Defeated senior, unbeatable Garleans including Zenos yae Galvus twice.
• Liberated Ala Mhigo and Doma.
• Saved another shard from a light calamity that would result in an 8th Umbral Calamity on the source that would have destroyed life as we know it by single-handedly absorbing all its light energy and safely discarding it.
• Defeated senior acient Ascians with many times the soul density, including Lahabrea, Emet-Selch and Elidibus.
• Defeated the eldest and most powerful of primals, Hydaelyn and Zodiark.
• Traveled to the Moon for a holiday with some rabbits that like carrots.
• Came up with the key component to allow a space ship to function and flew it to the other side of the galaxy.
• Defeated a being of pure despair that wiped out all other civilisations in the galaxy and was about to wipe out ours.
• Took the void world, otherwise known as the thirteenth dimension, onto a pathway to restoring itself, finally, after always been seen as an unsavable source of voidsent.
• Defeated the reveered mythical gods that have long influenced every nation in the world, the Twelve, by casually walking into the heavens and asking them if I can kill them. They said yes.

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No specific suggestions -- it's not like there's any characters I *want* to see die, or any major events I have in mind -- but just getting back to that point of feeling like there *is* a sense of danger for our characters.

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What's clear to us all now is they never had any intention of threatening the main characters. They are like the Scooby-Doo or Simpsons cast. Although you can think people died in Heavensward and ARR, it was an illusion, because those characters were created just before HW so that they could die in HW, while the deaths in ARR were people we'd only met very briefly or didn't even know. The few scions we lost were people they couldn't salvage from 1.0 and just wanted to write them out from the start.

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I also wouldn't mind seeing more of some of the old City-State leaders again. Watching through some folks playing through segments of FFXIV for the first time, I think I'm always surprised how Pipin Lolopin (Raubaun's adoptive son, who helped rescue you from Ul'dah) didn't really amount to much. I'd still love to see him get some screen time, personally.

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I've seen Pipin return many times in the MSQ, in job quests and role quests. I see the city state leaders return all the time in the MSQ, in role quests and in seasonal events.

Same, ARR in all its facets was better than anything we got after. The only thing the other expansions did better was Field explorations (eureka and bozja).

ARR had: Dots on almost all classes/jobs, meaningful use of open world, or at least the most use of it compared to future expansions, a more political and serious MSQ which dealt with the nature of countries and peoples, a denser open world, very unique jobs mechanically from each other, a well thought out relic system, dungeons with a lot of mechanics (pharos sirius even after the nerfs still wipes parties, this is unheard of in dungeons past stormblood), etc

I'll forever miss War's unchained mechanic.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

You know, on a small tangent... People talk about characters needing to die because we haven't had any real losses in quite some time, but that's odd to me. Why does a character need to die specifically? There are other consequences of loss that can often times be far more impactful, such as when Raubahn lost an arm. He didn't die, but the impact of the story at the end of ARR changed him as a character.

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I'm okay with characters not dying, but baiting deaths is the most boring thing a writer can do.
Fairy tail is one of the worst media about this that i've seen
I'm of the opinion you don't have to kill characters to tell a good story, but it is very annoying when you try and have your cake and eat it too (y'shtola is a good example in ff14)

There have been better moments in the game than the end of ARR.

What makes the ARR ending stick in memory so much is it was so out of the blue unexpected. While the MSQ was obviously leading up to some great turmoil, I don't think anyone anticipated that SE would take things as far as they did.

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I'm okay with characters not dying, but baiting deaths is the most boring thing a writer can do.
Fairy tail is one of the worst media about this that i've seen
I'm of the opinion you don't have to kill characters to tell a good story, but it is very annoying when you try and have your cake and eat it too (y'shtola is a good example in ff14)

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A good part depends on what the story is about. Most stories aren't about events that would generally lead to death.

This has been a story about a fierce battle against the odds. People on all sides die in battles. A lot, especially when one faction is very powerful compared to any others.

It feels strange when no one is dying except those on the antagonist side. I agree that Y'shtola is a good example of it being done wrong, especially after the conversation between her and Master Motoya at the end of our first meeting. While I'm sure that was intended as a demonstration of just how powerful the Ancients were compared to contemporary races, no one should have 3 "get out of jail free" cards even if they're a cat (and I'm not looking forward to watching 5 more getting used).

At this point the only deaths I ever expect are those of new characters.

That said, my money is Galool Ja being the new sacrificial lamb in 7.0 so it can be a motivating factor for his children to accomplish...whatever it is ends up coming after the succession business.

Many comments online and people around me don't like ARR story at all

However, I don't care what they say. I like ARR story very much, all the way through 2.5.

The point about becoming an anime feels good is 100% correct. You can clearly see the tropeyness and tbh immaturely crafted character writing rise in ShB. The more mature down to earth writing has been overseeded by this very anime style trope fest and quite frankly it's pretty jarring to look at after being here from ARR. Also you pretty much have to forget we are almost a god at this point in power level because they didn't have our powers taken or diminished in any way.
I'm guessing DT story will be very much the same with yshtola being immortal god who does the occasional out of character laughing scene, graha will be simping his pants off to us as always (how can a 100 year old man who had to care for an entire world be reduced to this...) and estinien will have a pantless scene this time??? As you can see every character is being build with a trope at this point. I just hope theres some semblance of the magic that was in previous expacs left because EW almost killed the game for me.

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Originally Posted by Solakor

The point about becoming an anime feels good is 100% correct. You can clearly see the tropeyness and tbh immaturely crafted character writing rise in ShB. The more mature down to earth writing has been overseeded by this very anime style trope fest and quite frankly it's pretty jarring to look at after being here from ARR. Also you pretty much have to forget we are almost a god at this point in power level because they didn't have our powers taken or diminished in any way.
I'm guessing DT story will be very much the same with yshtola being immortal god who does the occasional out of character laughing scene, graha will be simping his pants off to us as always (how can a 100 year old man who had to care for an entire world be reduced to this...) and estinien will have a pantless scene this time??? As you can see every character is being build with a trope at this point. I just hope theres some semblance of the magic that was in previous expacs left because EW almost killed the game for me.

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This right here. They even managed to almost turn sharlayan into a stereotypical anime highschool at some points. If realm reborn was remade by these same writers the story in ul'dah would most likely have cutscenes of us shopping for jewelry and carpets and some Aladdin tropes and the like.

I do think the state of being on the run was a great idea for ARR to set up a new expansion. It's a shame we have come so far that something like that would no longer be possible to do a second time for another expansion. The WoL has grown so much that it really wouldn't make sense anymore for government policies to hinder us.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

This right here. They even managed to almost turn sharlayan into a stereotypical anime highschool at some points. If realm reborn was remade by these same writers the story in ul'dah would most likely have cutscenes of us shopping for jewelry and carpets and some Aladdin tropes and the like.

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The animation team is just really proud of the levels of animation they can include nowadays. Which can only really be expressed through the slice of life kind of moments. That's why we suddenly have so many meal scenes. Also, it's one of the few things that has left at being able to show the characters bonding outside of saving the world to make them still feel a sense of normalcy.

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Originally Posted by Terin

I also wouldn't mind seeing more of some of the old City-State leaders again. Watching through some folks playing through segments of FFXIV for the first time, I think I'm always surprised how Pipin Lolopin (Raubaun's adoptive son, who helped rescue you from Ul'dah) didn't really amount to much. I'd still love to see him get some screen time, personally.

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Pipin Tarupin succeeded Raubahn as the new Flame General in 4.1, and shows up whenever Ul'dah needs a military representative, notably joining the Ilsabard Contingent in Endwalker, where he fights alongside Lyse in the Tower of Babil. He doesn't get a lot of screen time because the main plot moved away from Eorzea and he has responsibilities there.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

The animation team is just really proud of the levels of animation they can include nowadays. Which can only really be expressed through the slice of life kind of moments. That's why we suddenly have so many meal scenes. Also, it's one of the few things that has left at being able to show the characters bonding outside of saving the world to make them still feel a sense of normalcy.

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Creating a good story is hard. Creating a flashy scene and pulling tropes out of anime is not that hard. Even ff16 was more flash than substance after the first 10 hours. It's kinda funny the game advertises itself being a story MMO but did the cardinal sin of not fleshing out a well defined ending that makes sense with the material before. And even better, at the behest of the director himself. Juggling 2 triple A games was clearly a good idea and the damage control has been pretty hilarious with yoship blaming the community and the fanbois saying theres nothing wrong with EW.
I recently watched a josh strife hayes and nerdslayer vids about the mmo rift and how the company behind it got way too ambitious trying to juggle 3 projects at once and ultimately everything fell flat. Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.
14 needs to refocus in what made it good and not half ass things. Gameplay first with story that makes sense. MMO content with other ppl and some evolution of systems

Yes, ARR ending was the best and the game has never topped it since. HW is my favorite, but that's also because the end of ARR set it up perfectly.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

You know, on a small tangent... People talk about characters needing to die because we haven't had any real losses in quite some time, but that's odd to me. Why does a character need to die specifically? There are other consequences of loss that can often times be far more impactful, such as when Raubahn lost an arm. He didn't die, but the impact of the story at the end of ARR changed him as a character.

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Constantly adding new characters and old characters never dying means that the world isn't threatening enough to be interesting and the characters aren't doing enough interesting things that would warrant them dying. Raubahn losing an arm is great and all, but that was only great because it also happened at the same time as the Sultana's "death." If Raubahn simply lost an arm without Sultana being truly threatened (which means death), it wouldn't (and ultimately didn't) matter at all which makes it fall flat hard.

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Originally Posted by Solakor

Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.

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Rift had a gimmick, one that started to fall flat for me about 2 years into the game. It was overshadowed by the release of competing MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft expansions.

It was never a main game for me, rather, it was one to kick back and play between leveling alts in Cataclysm or Mists of Panderia.

I was never a big fan of Trion Worlds games. The company (under their Glyph name) later came out with Archeage and Atlas Reactor.

If you're interested, you can always try it out. It appears to be free to play at this point, although the better Souls you can incorporate in-game are going to cost you.

ARR Ilberd remains one of my favorite villains in the game, and I felt it would have been a superb decision if he went into the shadows for all of HW only to resurface in Stormblood as the main antagonist as he had such strong ties to Ala Mhigo and massive motivations to a part of that conflict. I guess they decided to go with Zenos instead.

Ah well, C'est la vie.

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Originally Posted by Terin

There's just nothing quite like experiencing that level of *shock*, of "holy crap, there's no way this is ACTUALLY happening right now?!?", it was just something that I've never experience in any other MMO.

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I thought this at the Quintus scene in Endwalker. I loved the end of ARR and having to flee but as far as RPG tropes, that's a pretty common one. What Quintus did? Not something you often see.

ARR was my favorite time with this game, nothing after ever reached it again :(

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Originally Posted by Solakor

Creating a good story is hard. Creating a flashy scene and pulling tropes out of anime is not that hard. Even ff16 was more flash than substance after the first 10 hours. It's kinda funny the game advertises itself being a story MMO but did the cardinal sin of not fleshing out a well defined ending that makes sense with the material before. And even better, at the behest of the director himself. Juggling 2 triple A games was clearly a good idea and the damage control has been pretty hilarious with yoship blaming the community and the fanbois saying theres nothing wrong with EW.
I recently watched a josh strife hayes and nerdslayer vids about the mmo rift and how the company behind it got way too ambitious trying to juggle 3 projects at once and ultimately everything fell flat. Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.
14 needs to refocus in what made it good and not half ass things. Gameplay first with story that makes sense. MMO content with other ppl and some evolution of systems

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I think it's more that the story the devs want to tell and the story the players want to experience are two different things. But the devs also have the "The players will like whatever we throw at them anyway" going for them. Like reading some of their answers from interviews about why the Garlean expansion was cut, that Endwalker was going to be 7.0, their reasons for why we're going to be a normie adventurer again for the rest of the game's lifespan, and other stuff. All of it indicates that the devs were bored with their own story and wanted it to be over. They no longer liked what they were doing. Even admitted that the Ascians and Zodiark had no goal or objective until Shadowbringers when they first decided to start wrapping things up. That Zenos existed to replace the Ascains as the big bad. But then they realized how long it'd take to wrap things up cohesively and decided to rush it because they wanted to tell their brand-new stuff with the Void and Dawntrail. The problem with the story right now isn't even the story, it's the fact that the devs no longer want to make grand compelling arcs. They want us to be in self-contained stories and to sightsee as much of the world as there's left to see before Yoshi-P retires. Not only has the community gotten more casual but even the story wants to be a more casual slice of life environment. The story isn't about saving the world anymore, it's about having fun with your friends. The other scions. We will still have some save-the-world moments here and there like the recent Zeromus, but that's more collateral damage to the Ascians as it's still closely related to their past actions.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

I think it's more that the story the devs want to tell and the story the players want to experience are two different things. But the devs also have the "The players will like whatever we throw at them anyway" going for them. Like reading some of their answers from interviews about why the Garlean expansion was cut, that Endwalker was going to be 7.0, their reasons for why we're going to be a normie adventurer again for the rest of the game's lifespan, and other stuff. All of it indicates that the devs were bored with their own story and wanted it to be over. They no longer liked what they were doing. Even admitted that the Ascians and Zodiark had no goal or objective until Shadowbringers when they first decided to start wrapping things up. That Zenos existed to replace the Ascains as the big bad. But then they realized how long it'd take to wrap things up cohesively and decided to rush it because they wanted to tell their brand-new stuff with the Void and Dawntrail. The problem with the story right now isn't even the story, it's the fact that the devs no longer want to make grand compelling arcs. They want us to be in self-contained stories and to sightsee as much of the world as there's left to see before Yoshi-P retires. Not only has the community gotten more casual but even the story wants to be a more casual slice of life environment. The story isn't about saving the world anymore, it's about having fun with your friends. The other scions. We will still have some save-the-world moments here and there like the recent Zeromus, but that's more collateral damage to the Ascians as it's still closely related to their past actions.

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I find it extremely weird that they suddenly just want to erase everything and seem very incompetent writers compared to before. Like axing an expansion because they can't think of a story that fits into 2 expacs? And then coming out with this void arc to just fill the 6.1-5 time with something? Also what about the content and issues with EW in general? I mean something happened from before. Where did the passion go to tell a good story and ending to a 10 year old saga? Did they change so many devs and are they incapable of writing anything good now? I'm just not buying it. DT will definately be a defining expac as to what they want from the game (other than money).

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

You know, on a small tangent... People talk about characters needing to die because we haven't had any real losses in quite some time, but that's odd to me. Why does a character need to die specifically? There are other consequences of loss that can often times be far more impactful, such as when Raubahn lost an arm. He didn't die, but the impact of the story at the end of ARR changed him as a character.

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And nothing like that has happened in a long time either, case in point.

The comment about the current writing being too "feel good anime" sums up the state of the MSQ perfectly...

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

I think it's more that the story the devs want to tell and the story the players want to experience are two different things. But the devs also have the "The players will like whatever we throw at them anyway" going for them. Like reading some of their answers from interviews about why the Garlean expansion was cut, that Endwalker was going to be 7.0, their reasons for why we're going to be a normie adventurer again for the rest of the game's lifespan, and other stuff. All of it indicates that the devs were bored with their own story and wanted it to be over. They no longer liked what they were doing. Even admitted that the Ascians and Zodiark had no goal or objective until Shadowbringers when they first decided to start wrapping things up. That Zenos existed to replace the Ascains as the big bad. But then they realized how long it'd take to wrap things up cohesively and decided to rush it because they wanted to tell their brand-new stuff with the Void and Dawntrail. The problem with the story right now isn't even the story, it's the fact that the devs no longer want to make grand compelling arcs. They want us to be in self-contained stories and to sightsee as much of the world as there's left to see before Yoshi-P retires. Not only has the community gotten more casual but even the story wants to be a more casual slice of life environment. The story isn't about saving the world anymore, it's about having fun with your friends. The other scions. We will still have some save-the-world moments here and there like the recent Zeromus, but that's more collateral damage to the Ascians as it's still closely related to their past actions.

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Self contained stories can both be more than just slice of life feel good slops and have high stakes. It gets done in game and movie media all the time.

ARR imo was okay-ish for me. I must admit that a lot of times back then as a sprout I was so overwhelmed by everything the game has to offer that I didn’t pay full attention to what was happening story-wise. It got better towards the end and this one event which I would like to regard as a very unexpected twist in the story of ARR had me 100% on edge. Also I never will forget this feeling of loneliness and defeat when me and 2 of my scion companions stumbled into Ishgard.
But HW and also ShB will always, ALWAYS have a very special place in my heart. I just loved the slight medieval setting. Both expansions had put me on such an emotional rollercoaster and especially HW made me cry for real more than once o.o Lately only XC3 was able to do that to me.

Stormblood was nice but I felt there were parts of the story where the writing could’ve been better. And with EW… I remember being excited about it but in the end I was mildly disappointed. So I won’t get my hopes too high for DT. The whole notion of suddenly being the casually traveling adventurer with his merry band of friends when the whole time we have been the worlds’ only bulwark between annihilation and survival strikes me as “odd”.
I don’t always need to be on high alert story-wise but this seems to be too harsh of a story turn. But that’s only my opinion.

I do understand that a writer of a story has the liberty to tell the story as they want. But on the other hand the writer shouldn’t be too disappointed if not everyone will be fangirling and fanboying about it in the end.
Also I have the slight feeling that the devs/writers/whoever kind of had the story roughly outlined in the back of their heads till the end of the whole Ascian cycle. And now that this story part is completely told they kind of lack the idea of how to continue.

I do agree here with Bonoki that the story of EW felt “rushed”. Reminds me of Xenosaga which was planned as a 6-part-series originally. Then after releasing part I and II they ran out of money and time and squeezed the story content of the remaining 4 parts into the last part III. The whole story was rather philosophical from the beginning and heavily used biblical imagery and used elements of the works of Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche. That alone was hard to understand at times, but squeezing so much story in the last remaining part… yea, after finishing EW I felt similarly confused like after beating Xenosaga III, lol.

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Originally Posted by PactCommander

Stormblood was nice but I felt there were parts of the story where the writing could’ve been better.

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Stormblood imo suffered from the choice of having it play out on two entirely different continents, too much jumping around to really flesh either of them out.
It's also one of the many reasons why Endwalker fell completely flat for me. They tried to cram two expansions (plus patch content) into a single base expansion and it had so much jumping between different locales that I didn't particularly care about any of them.

I quite liked the tone of early FFXIV (up through Stormblood), particularly ARR. It felt grounded. You're a protagonist but not an almighty superhero. The Scions can't waltz anywhere and do anything they please, instead they have to get along with the program and do favors for Ishgard too. There are benevolent sovereigns like Nanamo but they are not almighty and can only do so much. Merlwyb has to do uncomfortable things to keep her people afloat. There is no good solution to refugees; Domans can be squeezed in because they offer intel, but most people are unsympathetic to the Ala Mhigans due to bad blood and they don't have anything to offer so they get turned away. The world felt big and dangerous. That feel starts going away in the expansions once all of the internal problems within the countries and limited resources are handwaved away, so the WoL and Scions start accomplishing everything without problems. I also preferred when FFXIV was about different nations in conflict with each other, be it fighting different beast races or fighting Garlean legions or fighting a dragon brood, etc, rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Stormblood imo suffered from the choice of having it play out on two entirely different continents, too much jumping around to really flesh either of them out.
It's also one of the many reasons why Endwalker fell completely flat for me. They tried to cram two expansions (plus patch content) into a single base expansion and it had so much jumping between different locales that I didn't particularly care about any of them.

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I didn't have a problem with Stormblood having two continents. While I would have liked to have gotten more Gyr Abania and Othard zones, it wouldn't have been good to follow up a Gyr Abania expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald with another expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald. Four years and two expansions about the same story. Consolidation was required, though if Square did what GW2 did and added new zones in every patch, then we could have had Othard zones added in every Stormblood patch and thus we could have gotten more zones (6 Gyr Abania zones at launch and then 5 or 6 more Othard zones in patches) in the same time span of one expansion in 2 years, that way both regions would have been more fleshed out.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.

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Ilberd wasn't depressed. Psychotic, perhaps.

Such villains seem to show up at least once every expansion.

< yeah, I deliberately ignored the rest of the post ... >

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

I quite liked the tone of early FFXIV (up through Stormblood), particularly ARR. It felt grounded. You're a protagonist but not an almighty superhero. The Scions can't waltz anywhere and do anything they please, instead they have to get along with the program and do favors for Ishgard too. There are benevolent sovereigns like Nanamo but they are not almighty and can only do so much. Merlwyb has to do uncomfortable things to keep her people afloat. There is no good solution to refugees; Domans can be squeezed in because they offer intel, but most people are unsympathetic to the Ala Mhigans due to bad blood and they don't have anything to offer so they get turned away. The world felt big and dangerous. That feel starts going away in the expansions once all of the internal problems within the countries and limited resources are handwaved away, so the WoL and Scions start accomplishing everything without problems. I also preferred when FFXIV was about different nations in conflict with each other, be it fighting different beast races or fighting Garlean legions or fighting a dragon brood, etc, rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.





I didn't have a problem with Stormblood having two continents. While I would have liked to have gotten more Gyr Abania and Othard zones, it wouldn't have been good to follow up a Gyr Abania expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald with another expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald. Four years and two expansions about the same story. Consolidation was required, though if Square did what GW2 did and added new zones in every patch, then we could have had Othard zones added in every Stormblood patch and thus we could have gotten more zones (6 Gyr Abania zones at launch and then 5 or 6 more Othard zones in patches) in the same time span of one expansion in 2 years, that way both regions would have been more fleshed out.

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I think that's really well summarized. It sounds counterintuitive, but there's something much more "epic" about nations having believable, grounded conflicts with each other, moreso than "the literal fate of the planet and all life as we know it hangs in the balance".

At the very least, it *does* feel like they're leaning that direction a little bit more. At least, lowering the stakes and having us travel someplace we aren't renowned saviors of the universe. Hopefully they'll introduce a little more grounded conflict. Like "here's a character that's a warmonger, but has a lot of resources, and is inflicting real, lasting pain on the characters you know and love". Heck, even allowing the Monetarists in Ul'dah to make some headway again, or maybe a particularly merciless gang of pirates returning from some far-flung voyage and thrusting Limsa Lominsa into chaos.

Housing portrait honoring Wilred, when?

I suppose I'm in the minority here on these forums, because I found the ending of ARR too stressful to be enjoyable and have enjoyed the game far more since then. I love that characters have gotten more sides to them besides just plain serious, and more silly moments in Shadowbringers and Endwalker in particular. I'm also really looking forward to Dawntrail as a vacation and fresh adventure, both. This game, it feels, has been designed specifically to my taste. It can still make me cry and take my breath away, but I know in the end everything will be okay. I cherish it so much for that.

One of the issues with the story at the moment. Pretty much all the major political beats have been resolved leaving little to no room for worthwhile drama and intrigue.

There is also the issue of hesitancy to kill off characters when it's appropriate. Yeah killing of willy-nilly is terrible writing but had either

the Sultana or Thancred died at certain notable plot points in ARR and SB

then it would have fine since their story had largely done their purpose.

Meanwhile

Varis's death was literally a left-field death knell for the drama between Erozea and Garlemald effectievly gutting an entire expansion worth of plot in favor of one later sidelined character.