What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Scryar]

A character dying doesn't dictate what is bad or good storytelling. Let me show you what I mean.

After Fellowship of the Ring, for a character to die.
a)they have to be a "baddie"
b)if they are not, they have to be a minor character.

LotR had no one else, part of the main cast, die after fellowship of the Ring. Heck, some may even argue that the only person to die wasn't a main cast. Yet you will be hard pressed to find someone say LoTR movie trilogy is bad story telling because no one else died. The "worst" consequence in that movie is that Frodo is going to the homeland of the elves. Any movie can be broken down into generalities, regardless of how good it is, and have that movie stripped of its quality.

Where exactly did I write that there can't be a good story without character deaths?

I still can criticize certain aspects and think that they cheapen a story while liking and thinking it's good overall.

I get that many people want to play a flawless hero in shining armor saving the world power fantasy but I never felt FF as a whole was about that. At least in the the FF I played there were always loses and sacrifices on both sides.
Worst of all the writers are constantly using characters deaths as bait. The huge amount of fake deaths during the course of the game has become a meme at this point. For me and I'm sure many others supposed deaths of scions don't even trigger any emotion anymore (which kinda defeats their purpose) because I know that they will be fine and surprise , surprise....that's exactly what happens every single time after Hw.

It also doesn't make sense sometimes. Let's get back to the Zenos scene again. All that Zenos want's is our attention, our rage and anger. And yet he is trying really hard to avoid doing something that would give him exactly that, like killing one of our friends.
He, one of the most powerful beings in the body of the WOL get's stopped and knocked over by a level 10 paladin who could barely defeat tempered soldiers earlier.
That scene was so absurd that the whole body change part felt pointless and cringe. I didn't even expect him to kill a scion as everybody knows by now that they have a ridiculous amount of plot armor but not even a B character? What was even the point of that whole scene? Showing that Zenos is incapable of getting what he want's even if it's served on a silver plate?
Or take the ending in Ultima Thule and all the "sacrifices" accompanied with emotional speeches from the Scions only to return 30 minutes later. What kind of sacrifice is that?
Emet's look when Hythlodaeus left to be sacrificed to Zodiark has a way bigger emotional impact on me then all the fake sacrifices of the scions during the Ultima Thule arc. Because the former had consequences even 5000 years later while the latter was forgotten after 30min , as if nothing happened.