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

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

but it was by their own choice, unless meteion influenced it? I don't see it as something bad, I guess

Pretty sure suicide is frowned upon.

Isn't Meteion influencing them exactly what happened? They were living a perfectly serene and peaceful life with no awareness of the outside universe, then Meteion showed up and they decided to make Ra-la in response, seemingly on a whim.

No, all of the cultures she found did this on their own, without outside influence. That's what drove her insane to begin with

[Rulakir]

No, all of the cultures she found did this on their own, without outside influence. That's what drove her insane to begin with

The notes within the Dead Ends say otherwise. Meteion is credited with both triggering the world war that decimated world #2 as well as her incessant pestering having caused the existential crisis of world #3 leading to the creation of Ra-la.

[EaraGrace]

The notes within the Dead Ends say otherwise. Meteion is credited with both triggering the world war that decimated world #2 as well as her incessant pestering having caused the existential crisis of world #3 leading to the creation of Ra-la.

World 2 had a preexisting conflict that used Meteions arrival as justification. Their World War was inevitable. And World 3’s people had already accepted they wanted to die before she came. The reason for her pestering was their answer that existence was pointless, and she hated that answer because of what it meant. If anything, it was Meteion who had the existential crisis, not those who created Ra-La, for them she was a pitiable creature who hadn’t accepted the truth yet.

The implication that "perfect is bad" is hard to shake off when they show different societies which reached different states of "fulfillment", "enlightenment", "perfection", "immortality", etc. and they all "reached" a catastrophic end (in some cases by nothing more than the power of the writer's pen imo and not a natural progression of events). Not a single one managed to keep living their lives. How can you shake off the implication that reaching such a state is indeed a bad thing with such representation?

The alternative explanation is that their societies weren’t perfect and instead simply traded one form of suffering for another. They achieved what they thought was perfection, worlds without sadness, pain or loss, when in reality they were just as plagued with suffering as “lesser” races. A perfect society would not kill itself after all. Perfection thus is bad, not because it’s a bad thing in itself, but because it’s an unobtainable goal that one will never achieve. And if one does think they have reached it, then they are wrong.

And this is the weird thing. The Ancients didn’t stop striving to do better. They got essentially detoured, but it’s as Hythlodaeus says. After all was said and done they planned to go back to their duties of being the stewards of the star and bettering it. So i’m curious what the message with them is.

What happens when there’s nothing left to create, nothing left to do to make the star “better”?

[KizuyaKatogami]

World 2 had a preexisting conflict that used Meteions arrival as justification. Their World War was inevitable. And World 3’s people had already accepted they wanted to die before she came. The reason for her pestering was their answer that existence was pointless, and she hated that answer because of what it meant. If anything, it was Meteion who had the existential crisis, not those who created Ra-La, for them she was a pitiable creature who hadn’t accepted the truth yet.



The alternative explanation is that their societies weren’t perfect and instead simply traded one form of suffering for another. They achieved what they thought was perfection, worlds without sadness, pain or loss, when in reality they were just as plagued with suffering as “lesser” races. A perfect society would not kill itself after all. Perfection thus is bad, not because it’s a bad thing in itself, but because it’s an unobtainable goal that one will never achieve. And if one does think they have reached it, then they are wrong.



What happens when there’s nothing left to create, nothing left to do to make the star “better”?

Who knows? If they even ever got to the point, maybe they go to a new planet and work towards bettering that one as well. Alas we’ll never know, because a devil sought it fit to end a civilization that had much room to grow and flourish. We could say the same for the sundered no? For all of their preaching of a better tomorrow, what happens when they reach it? Or are we going to say for them it’s an impossibility.

[Sicno]

The alternative explanation is that their societies weren’t perfect and instead simply traded one form of suffering for another. They achieved what they thought was perfection, worlds without sadness, pain or loss, when in reality they were just as plagued with suffering as “lesser” races. A perfect society would not kill itself after all. Perfection thus is bad, not because it’s a bad thing in itself, but because it’s an unobtainable goal that one will never achieve. And if one does think they have reached it, then they are wrong.

Because that's just the way the game presents these societies. A very basic caricaturization of different perceptions of "perfection" or "the peak" because they're not meant to be working societies, they're just hero fodder. It's "mustache-curling laughing villains" levels of caricaturization. They themselves believe their designs to be perfect but the 5 year old audience can easily point at the flaws in their plan and then cheer when the heroes do just that.