I don't think the game's direction is sustainable anymore (ending spoilers)

[Mezzoforte]

Through the years, this game has constantly ramped up in scale in numerous aspects.

Story wise, we started as a humble adventurer struggling to kill primals and now we're at the point of vanquishing an intergalactic monster intent on destroying all of existence. Anyone can see that the story has peaked at this point. After all, what's a bigger threat than something stronger than the god(s) that ruled our world? We just saved the universe... so where do we go from here? There's literally no possible threat that we can struggle to defeat, everything is beneath our scope. We even defeated Zenos, the only known being at our same level. Most of the ascians are dead, and those who remain are the sundered who no longer have a god to serve. But their story is done anyways, isn't it? The ascian threat is gone.

If anything Emet foreshadowed before the end carries any weight, it seems like they're going to attempt to wind things down back to a worldly scale, but how do you reconcile that after everything we've done? Will there even be any primal summonings? Will they reintroduce the ascians, or instroduce a new enemy force that functions similarly to them? Or is the solution just to keep trying to get bigger and badder threats somehow?

My point is: regardless of where the story goes, this will be seen as its highest peak, and it'll be controversial regardless. If the threats keep becoming greater, many of us will grow exhausted and find it contrived. If the threats become smaller, people will complain that it's boring. And should the threats be smaller, how will the story be compelling? How could we possibly struggle against anything? Primals are a joke to us now, only a god offers us a challenge.

At this point, anyone would assume that our character's story is over, yet the plan is to sustain the game for a couple more expansions at least. This worries me to say the very least. While I personally would love to go back to the scale of ARR-HW-SB, many people won't, and I realize that doing so will have narrative issues regardless. Is the only way to accomplish that through some sort of power level reset?

I guess we'll find out in 6.1 onward, but I can't say I'm not anxious. I don't want to see the game go downhill or become less loved.

If you have a dragon ball Z mindset then what you say is true. However, there are plenty of ways to move things back and to a smaller scale while at the same time not being able to simply overpower them. Defeating an evil universe destroying being is just a show of power. Trying to handle the politics of the delicate situation that is in Meracydia you cant simply just wipe everyone out to solve. Reframe the way in which you approach or see the story more so than just think like someone who is watching a season of dragon ball z.

[Exosapien]

If you have a dragon ball Z mindset then what you say is true. However, there are plenty of ways to move things back and to a smaller scale while at the same time not being able to simply overpower them. Defeating an evil universe destroying being is just a show of power. Trying to handle the politics of the delicate situation that is in Meracydia you cant simply just wipe everyone out to solve. Reframe the way in which you approach or see the story more so than just think like someone who is watching a season of dragon ball z.

I think a lot of people are also using WoW as a reference (even though it's story was never as good as FFXIV). They made this mistake thinking their story had to get larger and larger to the point they retconned basically every character and then tried to make it the MCU.

[Reinha]

I mean, we lost our support from the scions and will probably be heading out on our next adventure alone. Which is a big loss. We never would have succeeded without their help. We beat Zenos but I am not so sure he is dead and gone forever either! Plus as ppl say it doesnt need to be world ending to be a good story.

This would be a good opportunity to take a break from Alphi and Alisaie and give them new character models. They can't stay as children forever.

[Orieldis]

I think it's a valid concern.

The WoL is absurdly powerful. Without adequate challenge, conflict becomes trivial, and more importantly, boring. To create a more dire threat would be a curious choice, considering we just bodied the emotional embodiment of death and despair. That is to say, I think trying to 'scale up' after this would feel disingenuous - how could you top what we just went through without compromising the weight of previous threats? We need only look to WoW to see how well that turns out.

One theory I've been stirring on is the idea of a time skip. The scions have truly grown distant, and the WoL, now deprived of Hydaelyn's blessing and of opportunities to fight, has become weaker in complacency - while the ambiguous baddies have been preparing. Just a thought, though. I have faith in the writing team to figure something out.

[Mortime]

Np, now that we've basically beaten death we'll just have to beat super death next expansion. And then mega death in the expansion after next which will inevitably lead us to confrontation with hyper death. And we all know that after beating all those deaths that the final goal always was to beat the super mega hyper death all along. By the way, all the next expansions will be written by Danuser. Have fun.

[Averax]

Np, now that we've basically beaten death we'll just have to beat super death next expansion.

It's worse than that, we didn't beat death, we beat entropy itself...well kind of.

Meteion was hastening the inevitable heat death of the universe, to be certain, though she wasn't actually causing it. For the most part it didn't seem like she was actively out to get any one planet in particular other than ours

By the way, for those of you who don't know, that's a real thing. Look it up

[twixelstix]

I disagree.

Endwalker blew my mind and completely shattered my expectations. Through storytelling they managed to make me cry, smile, laugh, and once again form new opinions about characters that I at first didn't care for.

I trust their storytelling ability to keep us going and bring forth amazing new things.

[van_arn]

I disagree. We know what was sealed in Dalamud and the Moon now, but we don’t know what caused the Endsinger’s despair by way of destroying everything she scouted.

The planet itself might be a prison for whatever that might be, and we might be its warden.

That, or we might be the last bastion of life in the universe, naturally opposed to some great filter of death we’ve only seen evidence of in passing.

[Raikai]

Dunno, but I feel that we got some sort of "reset" after the ending...

We are no longer the WoL in the technical sense... No more Blessing of Light, and I'm even curious if the Echo is still a thing. Heck, even the final credits have your character's name listed as the Warrior of Light, suggests that is a role that you just finished playing. I don't think there's a significant power trip in Endwalker. Or at least not one that is highly disproportional to the threats we faced ever since HW.

My only remark is that you're probably the most famous person in the world, which might conspire against "fresh starts". I'd say it's unrealistic to think that the other zones in the planet are completely oblivious to EW's events.

However, like Emet-Selch suggested, there are other shards... And you can literally start from zero there. They can weave a new story that can span from 3 or 4 expansions, like the one we had ever since ARR, and the fact that none of the Scions can actually travel at will between them suggests that there's room for new characters, and at that, I completely trust XIV's writing team to create strong new characters.

And even at the prospect of an entire new saga taking place on another shard, the unexplored places of the First can also serve pretty much for the other 3 story "hubs" that go with the MSQ, that are the 8-man raids, 24-man raids and the .X trials stories, not even mentioning other side things like Eureka/Bozja.

[Dewslam]

With the hydalin storyline being done I think it's safe to say that threats aren't going to steadily ramp up from here and, instead, we're likely to meet a new threat and lean a new status quo as to why we can't just instantly obliterate it. Whether that's because it operates on different rules than the ones we're used to, or because it's an entirely different type of threat. For example: let's say the next storyline starts with one of the other fragmented worlds establishing connection with the Source. What would we expect to do? We couldn't just go over there and punch all of their people into submission, especially if we don't know their end goals. But what if it spirals out from there and through natural, human, actions rather than supernatural manipulation they try to take control over other worlds? Our powers would be pretty useless.