What is your biggest wish for endwalker that you know probably won't happen?

[RyuDragnier]

To put it bluntly. Yes.

First 2 I absolutely understand. The fact you didn't like the humor however...you must really like super serious exhausting dramas that have no break in tension.

[KizuyaKatogami]

First 2 I absolutely understand. The fact you didn't like the humor however...you must really like super serious exhausting dramas that have no break in tension.

Not particularly. I think there’s a time and place for everything. When ShB was advertised as the darkest, grittiest expansion yet. I expected consequences for the Protags. I expect there to be loss. Not really much humor. Yet despite it being advertised as dark, it was probably the expansion with the most humor yet. The expansion with the least amount of consequences and loss. That’s what irritates me. The humor just adds onto it because it just makes the story feel like a joke. If the protags are just going to always win and joke about things what’s the point. It’s the expansion we’re supposed to go against our toughest foes yet, but they pull out random asspulls and then have random fanservice to add “humor.” Just not my cup of tea.

[Theodric]

To many, myself included, there also isn't any real tension in the first place since it's pretty easy to work out which characters are never going to be in harm's way. The humour, then, comes off as poorly timed because there's nothing to get over in the first place.

There's a lot of melodrama about how the player character and his allies have been through 'so much' and yet they've never had to deal with even a fraction of the loss that most of the antagonists have endured. Which, in turn, just makes most of the protagonists come across as complete narcissists to me.

I also don't think it's unreasonable to expect bolder storytelling with higher stakes than what we have at the moment when previous Final Fantasy games had just that in spades.

I particularly enjoyed the intrigue and consequences in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. I also liked the boldness of some of the plot twists in Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy VII.

Most recently, I played through the Final Fantasy VIIR expansion and that gave a nice sense of danger and consequence without relying on having the antagonists act like fools and then die without ever scoring even a single victory.

It's very unfortunate that FFXIV is trying to just shuffle all of the consequences onto the antagonists and the occasional secondary character. Such a sense of lack of loss/stakes does not personally endear me to the likes of G'raha.

[van_arn]

To many, myself included, there also isn't any real tension in the first place since it's pretty easy to work out which characters are never going to be in harm's way. The humour, then, comes off as poorly timed because there's nothing to get over in the first place.

There's a lot of melodrama about how the player character and his allies have been through 'so much' and yet they've never had to deal with even a fraction of the loss that most of the antagonists have endured. Which, in turn, just makes most of the protagonists come across as complete narcissists to me.

I also don't think it's unreasonable to expect bolder storytelling with higher stakes than what we have at the moment when previous Final Fantasy games had just that in spades.

I particularly enjoyed the intrigue and consequences in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. I also liked the boldness of some of the plot twists in Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy VII.

Most recently, I played through the Final Fantasy VIIR expansion and that gave a nice sense of danger and consequence without relying on having the antagonists act like fools and then die without ever scoring even a single victory.

It's very unfortunate that FFXIV is trying to just shuffle all of the consequences onto the antagonists and the occasional secondary character. Such a sense of lack of loss/stakes does not personally endear me to the likes of G'raha.

I'd wager the Graha/Urianger dynamic is going to become more important in Endwalker. And the catgirl needs to get done in by a falling piano at this point.

[Kolsykol]

Race specific glamours past initial starter gear.

I totally agree, people tend to be really against anything that is '' locked '' tho.

Imo it just adds some uniqueness to the races.
And I mean it's meant to be cultural attire, so it makes sense for it to be locked.

On the topic of mogs I'd like to see undergarment customization, what I mean is stuff like pantyhose with different textures and patterns and stockings.
It just kinda sucks sometimes that they're tied to specific leg pieces.
And if they were tied to your undergarments they could also show through in shorts for example sorta like the shorts from the Nier raid.

It'd open up mogging a whole lot and sorta free you up from having to use specific leg pieces if you want that.
Same with how you have to use one very specific legpiece for fishnet, it can kinda mess your mog up if that's the only part of it you want.

[Lauront]

I'd wager the Graha/Urianger dynamic is going to become more important in Endwalker. And the catgirl needs to get done in by a falling piano at this point.

They'd sooner drop another meteor on the world before anything happens to her with the plot armour she has. Though if that piano falling did happen to occur, I'd like for G'raha to be right next to her. Two fer one.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I liked the Crystal Exarch in 5.0. I dislike G'raha Tia after. There are too many different problems with G'raha Tia for me to like him, especially in 5.4 and 5.5. He is a redundant character who competes with Alphinaud to fulfill the same character archetype and role in the narrative as the nerdy best friend of the WoL, he casually abandons the people of the Crystarium and shoves his way into the WoL's life, the game hyped him up dying in 5.3... only for him to inexplicably survive, and he continues to haunt the game after having missed an opportune moment to exit the narrative on a good note. I don't vehemently hate the character, but I'll never enjoy him and think that I'd enjoy the game more if he had just gracefully bowed out in 5.3.

As for humor, I overall liked the comedy moments in ShB. I don't think they detract from the game. A game can have a serious story and still have moments of levity. The comedy moments up spruce up the moment and sometimes help endear me to the characters. FFXII has an interesting plot, but the party members were very boring to watch for most of the story (outside of a handful of really well directed scenes, like when they meet the Gran Kitias, or when Ashe meets the Occuria, or the climax atop the Pharos).

As someone mentioned before, there is a noticeable lack of consequences or loss for the main characters in FFXIV. The most that happens is that almost all of the fodder Scions are killed halfway through 2.0. After that, you have the Scion's being framed and becoming fugitives at the end of 2.55, but then it is nonchalantly washed away in 3.0. Only side characters get killed off. No main characters (Scions or nation leaders) bite the bullet. The heroes never fail or make mistakes, resulting in disastrous consequences. No city states get nuked. Etc. At most, the heroes are temporarily inconvenienced, such as the WoL getting bested by Zenos and then having to go level grind on the other side of the continent before coming back. If Y'shtola had actually bit it and the Alliance had to pull back out of Gyr Abania, it would have felt more impactful.

[Jandor]

I liked the Crystal Exarch, was a mostly serious leader.

G'raha's whole 'shy uwu catboi' shtick is pretty annoying though. The man is a 300 year old time lord, why is he suddenly acting like a schoolgirl with a crush?

[Jettinson]

I liked the Crystal Exarch, was a mostly serious leader.

G'raha's whole 'shy uwu catboi' shtick is pretty annoying though. The man is a 300 year old time lord, why is he suddenly acting like a schoolgirl with a crush?

Take in heart that these 2 are different character in terms of progression. Nobody knew much of Crystal Exarch's identity, even freaking Emet Selch. Also take in mind that CE's shoulders were heavy of responsability, hope and all. He spent so much time in the First and yet people had not much of a clue of him, just he's from a different land (as he would associate the Scions as well)
The scenes in Kholusia already hinted his huge desire for adventure but he still put the safety of Stars first over himself.
Then he softened up after all that and got his fever dream of adventure.
Plus having a crystal powered allagan blood character in the Scions already make things... well hard to find a balance, oh yes he's also an all rounder too and can change classes, oops

This is not a disagreement btw, just stating how it came to this personality. I still enjoy the character but it is fair for people to be annoyed

[Tsiron]

I liked the Crystal Exarch in 5.0. I dislike G'raha Tia after. There are too many different problems with G'raha Tia for me to like him, especially in 5.4 and 5.5. He is a redundant character who competes with Alphinaud to fulfill the same character archetype and role in the narrative as the nerdy best friend of the WoL, he casually abandons the people of the Crystarium and shoves his way into the WoL's life, the game hyped him up dying in 5.3... only for him to inexplicably survive, and he continues to haunt the game after having missed an opportune moment to exit the narrative on a good note. I don't vehemently hate the character, but I'll never enjoy him and think that I'd enjoy the game more if he had just gracefully bowed out in 5.3.

Except it's not really the Crystal Exarch surviving so much as WoL and friends shoving his memories, courtesy of the Spirit Vessel, into the G'raha sealed inside the Crystal Tower on the Source. But yeah, I don't disagree that if there was ever a moment to kill the character off, that was probably it (similar to how they had the perfect opportunity with Thancred during ShB), so that just means the devs didn't want to. I'm somewhat bemused at all the hate G'raha's getting post 5.3, I don't personally have a problem with him... even if, yeah, there's some overlap between him and the twins as WoL's stalwart supporters and, yeah, this kind of humour may be somewhat jarring as we're going into the high-stakes, climactic finale expansion... but...

As for humor, I overall liked the comedy moments in ShB. I don't think they detract from the game. A game can have a serious story and still have moments of levity. The comedy moments up spruce up the moment and sometimes help endear me to the characters. FFXII has an interesting plot, but the party members were very boring to watch for most of the story (outside of a handful of really well directed scenes, like when they meet the Gran Kitias, or when Ashe meets the Occuria, or the climax atop the Pharos).

... I'm with you on this 100%, FFXII is the perfect example of humour (or lack thereof) making a huge difference. I could count the times the characters interact outside of progressing the story on one hand, they barely do, and it makes the whole experience incredibly dry.

At the end of the day though, I disagree with killing characters off just to show how grim and serious your story is. If anything, I actually wish more characters had survived (Moenbryda, Ysayle etc.)