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

[Ryaz]

I haven’t seen too many people being condescending to people who like the story in my experience and i frequent posts like these fairly often. I think i’ve seen far more of a problem of people trying to write off others’ criticism purely because it’s a forum post or that their opinion is in the minority so it doesn’t matter. Tbf reddit and twitter are essentially the opposite of what you’re equating the forums to. It’s 85% pandering and game worshipping, 10% actual discussion, 5% troll posts. Criticism isn’t really common on those platforms as you’re basically immediately shit down, mass downvoted, or reported as a troll(which i’ve actually had happen and have had posts taken down because people couldn’t handle my criticism). The forums are a much more welcoming place in that regard and is a much more sage space to give opinions on the game than the other two.

I've seen posts praising and not praising on Reddit as well., though you do see praising on those platforms for sure (and all the the streamers I've followed seem to like it so far, but I've only watched a couple or so). And this forum isn't much better about pushing posts away that like the game. As I said, there was one post thanking the devs for a great game, it barely made two pages and was pushed far down the list by a lack of replies. Just because there isn't a downvote button doesn't mean opposing viewpoints don't get silenced here. Saying this place is more welcoming that Twitter or reddit is simply untrue.

And as I've said, if people don't like the game, that's fine. But many people here like to present their opinions as objective facts instead of subjective opinions and write off people who like the story as "being easily emotionally manipulated", which is kinda condescending.

And I suppose I find it kinda odd that so many people claim to love the game, but then criticize every single aspect of it. Again, it reminds me of WoW and would make any potential player think FFXIV is just as bad if not worse than WoW right now.