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

[Lauront]

Not to mention that the Source surviving calamities are intended by the Ascian, otherwise the world would be dead lol. With how much they shape history, I won't even be surprised if the Astral era (where people rebuild and prosper) that followed after each calamity are designed by them so they could have civilizations as catalyst for the next disaster.

Even time travel as an invention comes down to 1) Ascian machinations resulting in Alexander and 2) a being from an unsundered world (Omega) being available to study.

[EaraGrace]

It could have happened fast, it could have happened after months/years, we don't know. But again, enough time should have happened for Pandaemonium to happen from start to finish (I doubt we'll get to the final chapter, see the Final Days and then get back out to sunny bright day Elpis) and for Hermes to assume his seat on the Convocation.

Oh god lets not open this pandoras box of asking when Pandaemonium occurs. We don't know and thats intended, arguing either way is its own whole dialogue tree.

Also, for the 23567423th time, you're underestimating the fitness of the collective of researchers of the entire star SERIOUSLY devoting to studying dynamis and trying to find a solution to their impending doom vs the expertise the planet's most devoted geek to his super niche hobby acquired during his lunch breaks. How long do you think it would have taken them to match such knowledge?

First, were talking about the celestial aether currents, not dynamis. We don't need to get sidetracked again.

Lets ask the Ancients whether Hermes was integral then shall we.

Elidibus?




Watcher?



Emet?

But it irks me to discover that there is an entirely different form of energy─and no one told me. That personal annoyance aside, Hermes's knowledge is undeniably impressive. Given that there are none among the Fourteen who specialize in the celestial, he would be a welcome edition.

Hythlodaeus: No one else we spoke with appeared to possess the chief's depth of knowledge on the subject, and neither did we hear any tales of stolen research. Which means that if Hermes himself harbors no desire to bring down an apocalypse, then he might be recruited to help prevent one...

...Or so sayeth the illustrious Emet-Selch.

Venat?


Other Elpis Researchers?

Timaios: What sets the chief's creations apart, however, is how they benefit from his boundless knowledge of the celestial realm. Birds that climb so high that they disappear from view. Others which traverse the boundless sky in moments, and all without riding the currents... I know of none save he who can conceive of such marvels. Even we who prize elegance of form above all else are dumbfounded by his genius.

Now only one of them says, explicitly, the words “we cannot replace him” or “we can’t do this without him,” but I think we can see where the evidence points.

But it didn't need to have a consciousness of its own that she could have corrupted. Let me give you a silly example. Emphasis on THIS IS A SILLY EXAMPLE. The Elpis flower didn't have a consciousness to manipulate dynamis into something deliberate, but it still reacted to it. It must have consumed some dynamis in a reaction that produces that change in color. If you put a giant Elpis flower near her it would have sucked larger quantities of dynamis. In the same way they could have created other things that would have sucked dynamis in larger quantities without having a consciousness to corrupt. Make a giant lamp post, an artificial sun, whatever.

The Elpis flower does not have a will, I think that is the only thing I agree with here.
The flower itself only reacts to dynamis, it does not manipulate it. The only things capable of effecting dynamis that we have seen are beings with a conscious will. In Hermes words it simply "reacts by altering its color and vibrancy" as it is "sensitive to the prevailing emotion in the vicinity." A real life analogy to this would be flowers that change color in response to light. Those flowers do not manipulate light of course, they simply react to its presence.

When Y'shtola witnesses someone turning into a blasphemy in Thavnair she says their aether is gone. There's no trace of the aether that constituted them. Where did that aether go if it wasn't consumed when creating these dynamis corporeal beings? Also dynamis crystals exist (you can even buy them with gemstones) so it's possible to store it into crystalized forms and keep them out of her reach. The more I think about it the more I realize there's so much they could have done.

Quoting Hermes again, "aether negates dynamis." The transformation is not what causes the aether to dissipate, but the very act of coming into contact with dynamis.

And with all the dynamis in the universe she wasn't capable of twisting a single ancient. That's the density of aether you need to completely block her effects. A single unsundered. She was capable of twisting their creations just because they weren't as aetherially dense as themselves.

She didn't have all the dynamis in existence, she had a portion of it. The whole idea of the moon lifeboat is reliant on that fact, as well as any space travel for that matter.

But... before they made Zodiark she still didn't twist any of the ancients themselves, only their creations.

...because she didn't possess control of all dynamis in existence?

That's just because we were trying to defeat her, so we needed to reach her in some capacity to interact with her directly. But again, the other possible solutions I proposed (and that didn't take me too long to think of) don't need to interact with her directly nor defeat her nor anything like that. Just block her effects or deprive her of the sauce that feeds her.

Once again, there simply was not enough aether on Etheirys to do so. The Mothercrystal took millennia to form, and it only got us there. All other plans run into the same problems we already discussing above.

But I mean in the context of "how the old humanity couldn't solve the Final Days so a new sundered humanity was necessary and they solved it". I'm talking specifically about the part that made the difference. The calamities and other battles are irrelevant in this context.

Btw the calamities are meant to be survived by humanity by design, exterminating everybody and not having anyone with whom the fragmented in the shards would be rejoined wouldn't have served the unsundered's plans. Remember they overdid it with the 13th only to realize it was useless to them.

And nearly failed again with the First if not for Minfilia's unplanned sacrifice. And whether the Ascians were planning to keep a handful around to repopulate means little to those who weathered the tragedies and still kept moving forward. Its not as if Emet was down there telling them its not actually a world ending calamity.

It was to create a better future in which none of that happened. Their hope wasn't put in creating a better tomorrow but instead focused on their past.

The following morning, the hour of his departure came at last. We stood upon the precipice of an unknown future, contemplating the promise of a tomorrow we would never see. Yet still we prayed. That our sacrifices had indeed sown the seeds of a better tomorrow. That at journey’s end, our departing friend might reap that joyous harvest too. We prayed as the Crystal Tower stirred to life, and vanished in a blinding flash of light.

[Lauront]

He hated the Ancient world for valid reasons? Oh, please. We have no evidence he ever tried to change things on a wider scale in the institute he was the literal director of. Animals are stressed when they are about to be put down? That's an actually good point; so why has he seemingly never introduced methods to render them unconscious to spare them the anxiety of imminent death?

They actually had methods like that, which is shown in the sidequests. So even the other researchers were already receptive to such approaches, although obviously the ancients vary in their attitudes to the creations... and again I will stress, at no point is this concern incorporated as part of anyone's "test", be it his own or Venat's, and it's not as though the sundered somehow value all creation equally - be it raising up their own arcane servants (including egis or in Eden, primals, Sharlayan constructs, arcanima etc.), using them for a multitude of different purposes (beasts of burden, entertainment, food, etc.), or even going so far as to consume souls to power fighting techniques (reaper, necromancer.) To the extent that there was any "problem", any good he could've done would be to use his future position in the Convocation to appeal to sentiments some ancients were already open to. Rather, his problem is quite literally that they were deciding whether these beings were fit for integration into the broader star, and this caused him discomfort because it brought the concept of death in stark view. He could not understand the value of life if death comes after. You already see this when he begins discussing the will to survive with pure soulless arcane entities, i.e. lightning sprites. It then becomes apparent when he exhorts the lykaones to live even if it means hating their creators, and even if it serves no purpose for the star. There is someone who thinks like this, whose name begins with a Z. In the end, all he is really after is to validate his nihilistic sentiments by finding reasons to blame it on his broader society, which he repeats as Amon. Venat's own view is that they must find an answer to this to avoid succumbing to a loss of the will to live when purpose is extinguished. So in the end this "test" he forces on everyone has little to do with any concerns about creations and, again, he's more than happy to doom them all along with the rest of life to give himself an answer he's not even satisfied with.

And with all the dynamis in the universe she wasn't capable of twisting a single ancient. That's the density of aether you need to completely block her effects. A single unsundered. She was capable of twisting their creations just because they weren't as aetherially dense as themselves.

And even its "abundance" is at a 2:1 ratio, not a 99:1 ratio, and it is the weaker of the two. So much so that even a sundered Zodiark was able to hold her depression waves at bay for 12k years, and that it took just a few sundered to stand against the misery amassed from countless stars.

[Sicno]

I just want to call back to my initial comment about Dynamis being Calvinball to allude to its vague and nebulous non-rules that writers conjure up to fit whatever scene they want to write. "They could have done X with Dynamis!" "No they couldn't, that's not how Dynamis works!"

I would say that, currently, the score between EaraGrace and Sicno is oogy to boogy.

That's just how it goes with such a clearly well designed element. More seriously tho, I feel like a lot of the responses I've dealt with are answered by things I've already said and I just keep paraphrasing it. I feel this will get nowhere.

And even its "abundance" is at a 2:1 ratio, not a 99:1 ratio, and it is the weaker of the two. So much so that even a sundered Zodiark was able to hold her depression waves at bay for 12k years, and that it took just a few sundered to stand against the misery amassed from countless stars.

Yeah, so I keep saying the real reason the ancients failed is not because of the strength of dynamis and Meteion but just because her attack exploited a weakness in their knowledge, their lack of interest in something utterly impractical to them. The test they were subjected to had questions like "what's the plate of my car?" or "what's the name of my dog?" and Hermes just happened to be the neighbor who knew some of those answers.

Snip

I need a vacation =_= I'll be back soon.

[Lauront]

That's just how it goes with such a clearly well designed element. More seriously tho, I feel like a lot of the responses I've dealt with are answered by things I've already said and I just keep paraphrasing it. I feel this will get nowhere.

Welcome to the club.

The fact of the matter is that the Watcher references scholars in the plural and credits them again, in the plural. Not just Hermes. Whether he was regarded as foremost by researchers in Elpis, whether the incumbent Fandaniel knew of celestial currents or not, it does not change this. So any insistence to the contrary is just wasting time because it is already a known fact that multiple scholars were involved.

[OhNooo]

I just think it’s hilarious how every suggestion made about how different elements of the story could’ve been handled gets shot down along with an explanation of game lore which basically boils down to “it couldn’t have happened that way because the devs didn’t write it that way” even if it’s a completely reasonable suggestion. I mean how dare anyone suggest that they didn’t care for an expansion story when the devs worked so hard on it and don’t forget yoshi p saved this game and ffxiv devs actually care about their player base unlike *other* mmos and and covid happened remember????

I just know that if the plot had been completely different people would still be defending it and if you don’t like it you didn’t understand the theme of the story, lack empathy, are possibly a psychopath because you liked a villain, need to go back to wow even though you never played it, are a troll, or never played a jrpg before lmao. It couldn’t possibly be just your opinion cause yoshi p is the game’s savior and he cried on a live letter so everything will get defended no matter what.

[Sicno]

Ok, back from that brief vacation =_= let's see...

Oh god lets not open this pandoras box of asking when Pandaemonium occurs. We don't know and thats intended, arguing either way is its own whole dialogue tree.

In that case let's also stay away from the Pandora's box that is estimating when the Final Days happened.

First, were talking about the celestial aether currents, not dynamis. We don't need to get sidetracked again.

Lets ask the Ancients whether Hermes was integral then shall we.

Now only one of them says, explicitly, the words “we cannot replace him” or “we can’t do this without him,” but I think we can see where the evidence points.

What I'm getting from all of this is that yes, he pointed out at the connection with those celestial currents and from there they started working on what they believed to be a solution, which was ultimately the summoning of Zodiark, and that he helped a big deal with all that. BUT we know better.

They barely managed to "patch things up", not to find a definitive solution because they never found the root of the problem. I'm not trying to argue if he was or not instrumental in that arguably subpar solution. The part that's relevant is if Venat had told them what the hell was up they could have come up with other solutions focused on the concrete thing they now know for certain to be the cause and those solutions wouldn't need HIM and ONLY HIM to spearhead them.

The Elpis flower does not have a will, I think that is the only thing I agree with here.
The flower itself only reacts to dynamis, it does not manipulate it. The only things capable of effecting dynamis that we have seen are beings with a conscious will. In Hermes words it simply "reacts by altering its color and vibrancy" as it is "sensitive to the prevailing emotion in the vicinity." A real life analogy to this would be flowers that change color in response to light. Those flowers do not manipulate light of course, they simply react to its presence.

But how do you think the light affects those flowers? The flower catches the light, a chemical reaction occurs which alters the color of its pigments. Reactions absorb or free energy. At least that's how it happens in the real world. In this fantasy world? Who knows. But considering how they seemed to play by conservation of energies with aether in the lore (at least before they introduced dynamis) I don't expect it to be different, also considering Hermes wanted to use it as an energy source. He didn't just want Meteion to interact with it, he wanted it to fuel her space travels.

Quoting Hermes again, "aether negates dynamis." The transformation is not what causes the aether to dissipate, but the very act of coming into contact with dynamis.

Maybe we're understanding "negate" in different ways here. I'm understanding it as "it blocks the effects of the other" and not as "they're polar opposite forces cancelling each other". Because if it was opposites cancelling it makes no sense that she wouldn't have been able to cancel out the aether of a single ancient nor get past Zodiark's barrier in all these years.

She didn't have all the dynamis in existence, she had a portion of it. The whole idea of the moon lifeboat is reliant on that fact, as well as any space travel for that matter.

If she didn't make use of that "dynamis is more abundant than aether" advantage it makes even less sense for her to be a threat and it makes it more probable the ancients would have triumphed if they knew they had to look for her.

Once again, there simply was not enough aether on Etheirys to do so. The Mothercrystal took millennia to form, and it only got us there. All other plans run into the same problems we already discussing above.

Use dynamis for the space travel, use aether for the barrier. And worst come to worst there was enough aether for Zodiark's barrier, just deploy it around her and not Etheirys. And also repeating myself from earlier, Zenos only needed mere scraps from the mothercrystal for the same travel (and still had enough reserves for our rematch afterwards). Guess our teeny-tiny toy boat wasn't really that good and space travel was easier than they sold it?

And nearly failed again with the First if not for Minfilia's unplanned sacrifice. And whether the Ascians were planning to keep a handful around to repopulate means little to those who weathered the tragedies and still kept moving forward. Its not as if Emet was down there telling them its not actually a world ending calamity.

No but there was an Elidibus to balance forces if they tipped too far into one direction. I think I recall he "created heroes" through history.

The following morning, the hour of his departure came at last. We stood upon the precipice of an unknown future, contemplating the promise of a tomorrow we would never see. Yet still we prayed. That our sacrifices had indeed sown the seeds of a better tomorrow. That at journey’s end, our departing friend might reap that joyous harvest too. We prayed as the Crystal Tower stirred to life, and vanished in a blinding flash of light.

...Yes, if you're banking into time travel to fix things and you're not the time traveler you're not expecting your current consciousness and memories to be part of that altered timeline.

[Rulakir]

More seriously tho, I feel like a lot of the responses I've dealt with are answered by things I've already said and I just keep paraphrasing it. I feel this will get nowhere.

This is why I quit doing it in the lore forums. Eventually you start to notice it's a pattern where inevitably the person you're replying to starts from the beginning of their argument (that you already addressed) and the cycle repeats. Hermes, in particular, seems to be the one where this happens most because it always circles back to whether or not he was necessary. I suspect it's such a sticking point because if he wasn't necessary (and there's certainly sufficient evidence that was the case) then Venat's already flimsy reasoning further falls apart. Regardless, the writers were never going to be able to justify the sundering being both intentional and with knowledge of the future.

I haven't seen anyone on either side change their mind about the characters or the story, so ultimately it seems pointless as well.

[Theodric]

I just think it’s hilarious how every suggestion made about how different elements of the story could’ve been handled gets shot down along with an explanation of game lore which basically boils down to “it couldn’t have happened that way because the devs didn’t write it that way” even if it’s a completely reasonable suggestion. I mean how dare anyone suggest that they didn’t care for an expansion story when the devs worked so hard on it and don’t forget yoshi p saved this game and ffxiv devs actually care about their player base unlike *other* mmos and and covid happened remember????

I just know that if the plot had been completely different people would still be defending it and if you don’t like it you didn’t understand the theme of the story, lack empathy, are possibly a psychopath because you liked a villain, need to go back to wow even though you never played it, are a troll, or never played a jrpg before lmao. It couldn’t possibly be just your opinion cause yoshi p is the game’s savior and he cried on a live letter so everything will get defended no matter what.

It's been a dire problem within this community for years, unfortunately. Not just here, either, but over on Reddit and Twitter as well.

I typically make ample use of the block function when it happens but it does grow exhausting. Worse yet, I know a lot of people who have admitted that they just don't bother engaging with any discussions related to the game altogether in order to avoid the weird personal attacks. Which is understandable, though likely leads to the development team getting a very skewed version of player feedback.

[aveyond-dreams]

All I know is that for 7.0 I'm not looking for some hugely deep thematic conflict about facing the amalgamation of ultimate despair. Just let me hit things with a sword, and give me some party members that don't make me roll my eyes whenever they come on screen and actually react to the world around them besides just providing lore explanations.

The 2 hours I spent in Elpis with the trio > the 8 years I spent being Thancred, Y'shtola, and the twins' henchman.