A worry/rant about storylines till now (very very minor spoiler warning)

[Reiryuu]

I enjoyed the story arc too (though I wish the credits didn't take 20 minutes to scroll so I could see the ending there...) but I always get a little pissed that my...our... whatever... characters just walk into things that are obviously a set-up. To keep this thread as spoiler free as possible I will just let that thought end there. Also... I wish our character would actually get angry and fight more like a certain someone I'm sure everyone was cheering on during his/her "exploits"

But what pisses me off the most? The apparent lack of communication between us and the rest of the scions unless they're just as stupid as our character seems to be. T_T

[Erudain]

Yeah is not that the cliffhanger ending is bad....but it seems there are lot of logical errors on the route you take to get to this ending (even using the FF XIV in universe logic) which is not the sign of great writing.
Not gonna give any spoilers, but there were a couple situations that were "no no".....

Or maybe it's it's all GRRM fault, he has ruined me when I read something else that is not up there....

[Darkobra]

...or as I like to think of it, a cheap and lazy gimmick.

Care to tell us how you'd do it? Also, who's your publisher? And don't do a David Cameron on me and dance around the question by changing the subject. It doesn't work for him, it sure as hell won't work for you.

[Riepah]

I've to agree somewhat with the OP. The occasional cliffhanger is nice and fine, but it shouldn't be the only thing we ever get. I hope we'll get a proper, satisfying ending at some point, for an entirely new story to begin a while after. That new story can be continued with a few cliffhangers again, until we get another, proper end. But just cliffhangers for all eternity isn't good.

[Ooshima]

Also, Japanese writers suck at endings. It's more in their culture to focus on the beginning and middle, than the ending.

Well that's quite true though.

[Naria]

While 1.0's ending was a cliffhanger, I also felt that the Seventh Umbral storyline had reached a resolution, even though not all questions had been answered. 2.0's launch storyline felt the same, while there were still plenty of problems the main arc of the rise or return of the Warrior of Light was complete. This just felt like the were shoehorning us into a climax because the version number was about to change. The cliffhanger also feels completely undercut by game mechanics, as they can't actually follow through with the consequences

and actually make you a fugitive. It is not as if we haven't already had one betrayal and fall of the Scions arc already.

Really all of the 2.5 storyline just feels very clumsy to me.

[Mistoltin]

I haven't completed 2.5 yet but can people come to an agreement that it's a cliff-hanger?
I disagree that 2.0 ended with a cliff-hanger but was more of a teaser, it ended the story but then said "Hey, there's still more in the future that could be very, very bad."

There's also for and against in regards to cliff-hangers. It's a nice, quick and cheap way to get people to come back because they want to see a conclusion but there has to be a point of which you have to conclude everything. I suppose it's why I was worried when they said the expansion was going to continue the storyline of 2.0, because it means that we wouldn't see the actual conclusion unless we paid for the expansion, which is unfortunate.

I suppose in the end it doesn't matter anyway, I'm probably going to skip most of it because it's boring.

[Yitan]

I agree. The first thing I said when I finished watching the ending cutscene was "Son of a bitch..!"

[BlaiseArath]

Care to tell us how you'd do it? Also, who's your publisher? And don't do a David Cameron on me and dance around the question by changing the subject. It doesn't work for him, it sure as hell won't work for you.

Pulling the "Could you do it better?" argument really is the end all "I have no real argument" argument.

Anywho, the way I see it.. the occasional cliffhanger is nice, and in a lot of cases they work well enough to keep people wanting more and speculating, keeping the images fresh in their mind for when the story resumes... but it doesn't mean its always a good gimmick to use. In this case though, I didn't mind it. It did was it was suppose to, make me want to find out more.

[Alberel]

Take a look at any multi-season TV series or long series of books. In most cases each season or book has a dramatic climax that leads directly into the next part of the series. Very rarely do any save for the very last actually resolve things with a sense of finality. FFXIV is just one continuous story much like a TV or book series. 2.55 was not meant to resolve anything because it is merely a climax, not a resolution to the story.