On Fandaniel (5.3 onward spoilers)

[RicaRuin]

Yeah, but we got a bland villain with no real motives or justification on top of another villain without interesting motives or the likes, and that's just really boring and meh.

[Enla]

Yeah, but we got a bland villain with no real motives or justification on top of another villain without interesting motives or the likes, and that's just really boring and meh.

This is my only concern really. I'm holding out hope that they're saving any depth Fandaniel might have for the next expansion - but if he /is/ this simple of a character I think it'd be a mistake to pair him with Zenos without adding a third wheel to counterbalance the sheer void that is their motivations.

Simplistic villains are generally fine. But they usually need a secondary, more complex villain in order to flesh them out and fill in the inherent weaknesses in their motives. Such as what happened in Stormblood where Zenos was ultimately the 'big bad' for the base expansion but much of our time was spent dealing with Yotsuyu, Fordola, and others to a certain extent to keep Zenos' the one trick pony from outstaying his welcome. That or they need to do something so out of left field that you cannot help but look up and pay attention. Kefka was simplistic and a force of nature, but he ultimately /won/ in his world. He became God. Likewise his antics were hilarious and deranged enough to make up for his lacking motivations which were brought on by the slave crown destroying his mind.

It remains to be seen if Fandaniel or Zenos can shoulder that kind of narrative responsibility. But if they can't, I hope that SE has some contingencies waiting in the wings to pick up their slack.

[NoblePigeon]

This is my only concern really. I'm holding out hope that they're saving any depth Fandaniel might have for the next expansion - but if he /is/ this simple of a character I think it'd be a mistake to pair him with Zenos without adding a third wheel to counterbalance the sheer void that is their motivations.

Simplistic villains are generally fine. But they usually need a secondary, more complex villain in order to flesh them out and fill in the inherent weaknesses in their motives. Such as what happened in Stormblood where Zenos was ultimately the 'big bad' for the base expansion but much of our time was spent dealing with Yotsuyu, Fordola, and others to a certain extent to keep Zenos' the one trick pony from outstaying his welcome. That or they need to do something so out of left field that you cannot help but look up and pay attention. Kefka was simplistic and a force of nature, but he ultimately /won/ in his world. He became God. Likewise his antics were hilarious and deranged enough to make up for his lacking motivations which were brought on by the slave crown destroying his mind.

It remains to be seen if Fandaniel or Zenos can shoulder that kind of narrative responsibility. But if they can't, I hope that SE has interesting secondary villains waiting in the wings to pick up their slack.

This is a concern I can get behind, in truth. The writing quality of the MSQ has picked up massively (which can't be attributed to any single person because it's a huge effort between amazing people, but Natsuko Ishikawa can take a lot of responsibility for that) so I'm not worried that they can't still make this pair up be interesting somehow. But if they swing and miss, yeah, it can easily dive into stale territory.

They drove the Ascians out of generic doomsday villain territory and into interesting doomsday villain territory, I'm confident they won't drive them back in.