Quote Originally Posted by Reinha View Post
Did you skip Meteion's report? Every civilization that was powerful enough to change their world ended up killing each other, killing themselves or wishing to die.
If Meteion is correct about everything, why not just let her do her thing? Maybe you're right. Maybe the Ancients would have been a "bad" civilization and kept sacrificing people to Zodiark until the planet was doomed.

Or...

Maybe they would have adapted to life with Zodiark in a weird, but potentially harmless way? ("This group of people will sacrifice themselves to Zodiark and delay their return to the star for 1000 years to relieve the last batch of souls and allow them to return, etc, etc.")

Maybe they would have figured out a way to retrieve their loved ones without having to sacrifice at all. ("Just a few more years powering up this huge crystal to sacrifice and Zodiark will be self-sustaining without souls!")

Maybe they would have eventually even solved the Meteion problem.

It's weird to me that in an expansion that lauds the idea of never giving up hope, that even the "situations of despair" those other societies had fallen to--that the Scions attempt to answer in their sacrifices--there still might have been a way for them to live on and find happiness, ONLY the Ancients are subject to this bizarre, "nope, chuck them in the trash, they were done, the moment you go into a tailspin your plane is doomed to crash so you might as well let go of the controls entirely" reaction. I would put forth even if the Ancients were about to make a horrible mistake, they still had the right to MAKE that mistake. FFXIV is a game that puts forth the idea that as long as you don't give up, you can atone for horrible things. I believe even the Ancients at their worst could have still had better days ahead of them, just like every other single person or society we see in the game, including those in the Dead Ends.