Endwalker was a great mess(SPOILERS)

[Rokke]

The problem with this message is it’s contradicted by Ironworks in ShB. Instead of sticking with what they had they decided to mess with time to bring back the WoL and avert the calamity instead of working with what they could(which we later find out was possible without time travel). That’s why i bring up the whole problem of it’s painted as a good thing when the protags do it but when the antagonists do it it’s wrong etc etc.

I get that frustration entirely. My biggest gripe with this game's time travel is that we get loops that aren't quite loops and splits that aren't clean splits with the end results + their reasoning things get very wishy washy very fast.

That may well be the point the writers are trying to push, but it is understandable to me why the Convocation - and their broader society - would refuse to adapt in that way, because putting aside any other desires for their return, if those souls were stuck inside Zodiark, they'd effectively be in a form of purgatory and deprived their connection to the star. Certainly in the story up to SHB we're not really given any reason as to why they'd need to be sundered, other than the opinions of Venat's faction over whether the new lives should inherit the star. The only rationale I can see comes post-EW (and only after the Elpis events, i.e. this would not have been knowledge available to them in the timeline prior to this), and even then only if you assume that had they been told the full story (which they were not, because the only person who knew it did not want to alter the timeline), they'd still have pressed onto their potential doom. In the absence of that we're stuck with "what ifs" as opposed to anything like a justification.

I get why they'd be disinclined to abandon their trapped people but with us being told 2 or 3 times in Thavnair alone to mourn those gone and move on, I don't think the game is exactly subtle in saying what/who was lost should have been accepted as effectively "gone". Tragic for sure, brutally for the ancients especially, but thats very much in line with To Live Is To Suffer. See point above for Graha shenanigans.

Tempering is much of a muchness given what was revealed right before the launch of Ragnarok. Certainly one can make the case that, after 12k years, it affected Lahabrea due to identity erosion and Elidibus due to wilfully allowing memory loss, but Zodiark was not actively using it to command them to do anything, because he was not that kind of primal. He was designed to have a controller.

Tempering is same ol same ol. Eng just decided to be silly there because lel moon wabbits funny. Zodiark wanted to be whole and free to complete his function, between Gaia, Emet, the starry fruit gummies and the warning in literally every language past English, I've yet to see anything that convinces me otherwise.