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

[Rulakir]

In what sense? Elidibus's goal is to usher in a calamity, which barring the time travel, he managed to do. I think the issues with Elidibus are more in a retrospective sense - i.e. given that we learnt he was a primal, why didn't he do x,y or z. However, at least until 4.5, he seemed to be moving rather cleverly; its Varis's agenda which was curtailed as a result. Technically speaking, if we remove the Exarch (re the kidnapping of the WoL) and Emet-Selch (5.3) from the equation, Elidibus would've succeeded in ending the WoL twice through his own methods. Or do you mean with the equilibrium shifting too far to light i.e. he let the WoL become a problem for them?

I was more referring to his inability to deal with Zenos and to finish off the WoL in SB. Zenos, in particular, seems to be the reason why Black Rose was never deployed in our current timeline, which has caused me to wonder if he exists in the 8UC. As far as ShB, agreed, but that whole expansion was about the WoL getting gifted with 'get out of jail free' cards. Emet was an assured win had it not been for the Ardbert merger and Elidibus was an assured win had it not been for Emet's intervention.

[Brinne]

I mean, yeah, that's exactly why they failed. In making us sympathize with the Ascians over Shadowbringers they made Zodiark into a Not Actually Evil god, thus writing themselves into a hole that made it hard to justify why what Venat did was good. When they made Zodiark neutral at worst, the introduction of "oh the world was gonna die anyway" didn't really stick. Instead of accepting that Hydaelyn is now a morally gray figure at best (allowing us to defeat an intergalactic world-ender, at the price of ending a civilization) they tried and failed to retcon that back to Hydey good Zodey bad world gonna die (I feel like YoshiP was partly responsible for this) and it fell apart. This is intent vs result, my point.

I mean, then we're in absolute agreement. I don't think the writers intentionally set forth to specifically do a Genocide Apologism. However, in the actual story they wrote and published, the text does, in fact, contain a Genocide Apologism. My feeling is they were so laser-focused on making the playerbase love Hydaelyn and convey that she was Good that they were careless and didn't think things through - at least, that's my hope - and here we are.

[anhaato]

Someone pointed out YoshiP's detachment from what the players are actually interested in; this I think was the root of the story's downfall. Shadowbringers wasn't a hit because of the high stakes, it was a hit because of how well it was done. If they had gone with the original plan of resolving Garlemald and THEN taking care of the ultimate Final Days threat then the story would've been a lot more fleshed out, but I feel YoshiP thought we wanted another lore-heavy high-stakes battle with godlike figures and a grand conclusion, so as soon as we had gotten out of the frying pan of shb it was straight into the fire of ew. And because they thought we wanted that, it just became a good vs evil shounen anime in the end hence the problems with trying to portray Venat's actions as good even though Hydaelyn was set up to be Maybe Not That Good since, once again someone else pointed out, way back in 3.x.

[anhaato]

I mean, then we're in absolute agreement. I don't think the writers intentionally set forth to specifically do a Genocide Apologism. However, in the actual story they wrote and published, the text does, in fact, contain a Genocide Apologism. My feeling is they were so laser-focused on making the playerbase love Hydaelyn and convey that she was Good that they were careless and didn't think things through - at least, that's my hope - and here we are.

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

[Lauront]

I was more referring to his inability to deal with Zenos and to finish off the WoL in SB. Zenos, in particular, seems to be the reason why Black Rose was never deployed in our current timeline, which has caused me to wonder if he exists in the 8UC. As far as ShB, agreed, but that whole expansion was about the WoL getting gifted with 'get out of jail free' cards. Emet was an assured win had it not been for the Ardbert merger and Elidibus was an assured win had it not been for Emet's intervention.

Ah I see. Particularly given Elidibus's primal aspect (although a 5.3 thing), it did sit rather strangely that he did not leverage that to gain more power, but I suspect it wasn't really planned out that early and instead was retrofitted. Regarding Zenos, my suspicion is Emet-Selch may have simply removed him from the equation if he posed a threat to their plans, if Black Rose itself did not, since he'd have little to keep him on the First. On the other hand, we saw how Zenos's motivation drained without the WoL as a sparring partner, so it's not inconceivable that, depending on the order of events, something similar happened in the 8UC, as well.

[Skyborne]

My main fear is that they are just going to Lazily have Ilsbard be resolved offscreen just like the Empire fell anticlimatically offscreen and all these storyarchs just remain on the cutting room floor and we will instead just go to Meracydia, or the New World, or other Shards to "Move On", locations i have almost zero interest in going to until this story is resolved in Ilsabard. If it is one of those locations first for 7.0 however then I may consider "moving on" and unsubscribing until an Ilsabard (or another Orthard) expansion is confirmed and use that time to whittle away at my increasing game library or further raise a Viera alt.

Would be nice to actually explore Ilsabard and deal with Garlemald in a way that isn't "lmao not my problem just move on sweeties, now you are part of the glorious global citizen Alliance and everything is great". However, it's pretty early to tell until 6.1 actually releases in a couple weeks. And even then, we may have to wait another 4+ months to see how things are going. My hopes aren't too high, considering how hard they want to just bury anything old and just immediately beat this "new adventure! new adventure! avenchur!" horse. While having afterschool club meetings and pizza parties with the Scions, of course.

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

Still 99% sure we will get some sort of Tales of the End where Venat is shown saving Amaurotine schoolchildren from a burning building or something. P-please like her... please...

[Brinne]

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

[Lauront]

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

^This. I'm on the fence about the game and willing to give it a chance, particularly now that they've had time to digest how the story was received vs what they intended, but if they do end up just doubling down on such themes, I think I'll take my leave.

I mean, yeah, that's exactly why they failed. In making us sympathize with the Ascians over Shadowbringers they made Zodiark into a Not Actually Evil god, thus writing themselves into a hole that made it hard to justify why what Venat did was good. When they made Zodiark neutral at worst, the introduction of "oh the world was gonna die anyway" didn't really stick. Instead of accepting that Hydaelyn is now a morally gray figure at best (allowing us to defeat an intergalactic world-ender, at the price of ending a civilization) they tried and failed to retcon that back to Hydey good Zodey bad world gonna die (I feel like YoshiP was partly responsible for this) and it fell apart. This is intent vs result, my point.

And most of us here would agree with that.

[Theodric]

I still have some hope that they can salvage the Garlean expansion after getting expansion gutted though. I hope that maybe one of the reasons they did this was to make the situation more unique in Ilsabard so that the plot was not to similar to Stormblood. Now with us having helped the capitol and Ilsabard being devastated by both the Civil War and apparently suffering the most damage from the final days, the various still active legions and the power vacuum that they wanted to create a more unique Ilsabard experience. I also hope that the developers see people wanting the clouds removed on Ilsabard and more traditional European fantasy zones which Ilsbard will have. I can imagine there could be a zone in Ilsabard inspired by Germany and Switzerland, something hinted at with the Online Store outfit as well as a Norwegian like zone and a more Gothic Romania like zone. And of course they can do a better conclusion to the Garlean storyline and do further world building with the Three Continents.

My main fear is that they are just going to Lazily have Ilsbard be resolved offscreen just like the Empire fell anticlimatically offscreen and all these storyarchs just remain on the cutting room floor and we will instead just go to Meracydia, or the New World, or other Shards to "Move On", locations i have almost zero interest in going to until this story is resolved in Ilsabard. If it is one of those locations first for 7.0 however then I may consider "moving on" and unsubscribing until an Ilsabard (or another Orthard) expansion is confirmed and use that time to whittle away at my increasing game library or further raise a Viera alt.

Yeah, I was bitterly disappointed by the lack of an authentic Garlean expansion. We've been following them in the story since the days of ARR and many people liked what they brought to the table so to have them thrown under the bus struck me as very questionable.

It also makes me second guess the feedback being gathered and sent to the development team. Where are they getting it from? What voices are they listening to and which are they ignoring?

Where are our community representatives and why aren't they engaging with the community here, on the game's official site? I guess they must be busy changing diapers or some such...

[aveyond-dreams]

I still have some hope that they can salvage the Garlean expansion after getting expansion gutted though. I hope that maybe one of the reasons they did this was to make the situation more unique in Ilsabard so that the plot was not to similar to Stormblood. Now with us having helped the capitol and Ilsabard being devastated by both the Civil War and apparently suffering the most damage from the final days, the various still active legions and the power vacuum that they wanted to create a more unique Ilsabard experience. I also hope that the developers see people wanting the clouds removed on Ilsabard and more traditional European fantasy zones which Ilsbard will have. I can imagine there could be a zone in Ilsabard inspired by Germany and Switzerland, something hinted at with the Online Store outfit as well as a Norwegian like zone and a more Gothic Romania like zone. And of course they can do a better conclusion to the Garlean storyline and do further world building with the Three Continents.

My main fear is that they are just going to Lazily have Ilsbard be resolved offscreen just like the Empire fell anticlimatically offscreen and all these storyarchs just remain on the cutting room floor and we will instead just go to Meracydia, or the New World, or other Shards to "Move On", locations i have almost zero interest in going to until this story is resolved in Ilsabard. If it is one of those locations first for 7.0 however then I may consider "moving on" and unsubscribing until an Ilsabard (or another Orthard) expansion is confirmed and use that time to whittle away at my increasing game library or further raise a Viera alt.

My personal preference for the future at this point is to go explore the former imperial territories and perhaps going about restoring fallen monarchies/heirs to their respective thrones. I would love to see zones based off the countries you mention in your post, as opposed to the community-held perception that Meracydia and the New World have to take after lands that I'm just not interested in visiting.

The people who seem to be so vocal about having the representation of a country like Australia of all places do not seem to realize that people don't come to Final Fantasy for that, nor do they come for New-World like aesthetics after that game turned out to be what it was, and beyond 1-2 Egypt like zones I simply wouldn't be interested in a full-on African themed expansion.

You can sell Final Fantasy players the classic "castle in the sky" vs "magitek empire" but I do not see them being interested in some of the ideas that people go on and on about for the sake of "diversity." There is plenty of diversity within the countries of Europe/Asia, which I have no problem being straightforward in saying that is what I am first and foremost interested in seeing.