Lore Forum Decorum - Just What is Meant by Good/Bad Faith?

[OhNooo]

Honestly, I have to ask why so many people who play this game seem to hate the story and more importantly, what did they want out of it? Did they want Meteion to win and destroy everything? Did they want the Ancients to survive and thus get rid of the future we know? Did they want the Garleans to conquer the world and take away everyone's freedom? What exactly did the detractors want to happen?

The fact that so many people are spending time to debate/discuss elements of the story just shows how passionate we are about it. Why is any type of criticism or any opinion that doesn't simply say "the story was amazing" met with replies like "if you hate the story so much why are you playing?" Asking for higher stakes in an end of the world scenario doesn't have to mean everyone dying or having a villain win.

To give you an example: one of the things I loved about Shb was the tension you felt as your character dealt with the light corruption. Of course, as the audience we all knew that we would be ok in the end, but we didn't know how. Sitting there watching my character almost turn into a lightwarden was one of the most edge-of-your-seat moments I've had in this story, and it was so well done! I wanted something like that in EW and I didn't feel that from the final zone at all.

One thing that would've put me at the edge of my seat is having one or more of the scions almost give into despair and seeing them start to turn. Rallying together to encourage them and bring them back from the brink of turning would be a wonderful scene. There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions. Nobody had to die to give us that tension either.

ETA: **There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions (except for the body swap part which ended pretty quickly. I wish they would've done more with that).

[SentioftheHoukai]

The fact that so many people are spending time to debate/discuss elements of the story just shows how passionate we are about it. Why is any type of criticism or any opinion that doesn't simply say "the story was amazing" met with replies like "if you hate the story so much why are you playing?" Asking for higher stakes in an end of the world scenario doesn't have to mean everyone dying or having a villain win.

To give you an example: one of the things I loved about Shb was the tension you felt as your character dealt with the light corruption. Of course, as the audience we all knew that we would be ok in the end, but we didn't know how. Sitting there watching my character almost turn into a lightwarden was one of the most edge-of-your-seat moments I've had in this story, and it was so well done! I wanted something like that in EW and I didn't feel that from the final zone at all.

One thing that would've put me at the edge of my seat is having one or more of the scions almost give into despair and seeing them start to turn. Rallying together to encourage them and bring them back from the brink of turning would be a wonderful scene. There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions. Nobody had to die to give us that tension either.

ETA: **There are so many ways to bring that tension and I just did not feel that at any point with our character or the Scions (except for the body swap part which ended pretty quickly. I wish they would've done more with that).

I second this notion. As you stated, Zenos didn't necessarily to kill and/or maim a Scion or two to up the ante a bit. Even a few wounded would've done the trick rather nicely, but as it stands we resolved most of Endwalker like a shounen protagonist and have much less motivation to prevent something like Zenos' bodyjack from ever happening again. Come to think of it, Endwalker just fails overall as far as the stakes are concerned. The Final Days didn't feel very final, at best we get like one cutscene of the Eorzean provinces having people almost turn into Blasphemies, but never actually turn.