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

[Nekokaori]

Honestly my fix would be the following ...

Elipis should have been the final zone, after mete and Hermes did their bs and went bye bye we should have refreshed their memory's, they could have used their creation magic to make us a creature, or entity that could destroy her send our ass out in one of their other creations to follow her, then we summon them to us destroy her..

we should been sent in to intergate him to know how to deal with her with the help of Emet.. then work to create something to deal with her

Then everything gets hard reset no zodiark no hydle and that could have led to amazing possiblitys where we were going and exploring other stars saving them and going on a grand adventurer after saving both the ancients and our world.

All the while time should been ticking against us with the worlds being ended to point if we ran out of time we would die as well aka when the first gets destoryed

[PawPaw]

Honestly the biggest problem with Elpis is that we are allowed to interact with it. When Elidibus was sending us back and we showed up as a tiny ghost I thought we were just going to observe and learn. I was fully prepared to sit there for 2+ hours and just collect information, completely unable to do anything as I view the memories before me. The moment I can talk to the past and it responds to me, I'm changing a lot of things. I really don't like the idea of "the past cannot be changed." We know that it can in this setting and have already done it. But it gets worse. Way worse. After we have defeated Meteion, we can still go back and do so with Pandemonium. We know where she is, what she is doing, how to stop her, and can potentially just do so (hard to say because Elpis technically changes how our power functions), but we don't. We continue to not change the past for "reasons." That's my problem with Elpis, you want to give me a fun map to explore in the past, but you don't want the obvious implications that brings. If you don't want alternate timelines then don't let me shake hands with a memory.

This drives me CRAZY! I've come back to this doomed world yet again and am making friends with even more of the population, people with connections to those in power, and I still say nothing to anyone about what I know is coming for their world. Just nodding like a slack-jawed idiot while I fight to save them from monsters below the ground while ignoring the existence of the monster in space above them.

Please just STOP with the time travel, writers, just stop it. You clearly don't understand how to make it work logically, so just stop.

[KizuyaKatogami]

This drives me CRAZY! I've come back to this doomed world yet again and am making friends with even more of the population, people with connections to those in power, and I still say nothing to anyone about what I know about what is coming for their world. Just nodding like a slack-jawed idiot while I fight to save them from monsters below the ground while ignoring the existence of the monster in space above them.

Please just STOP with the time travel, writers, just stop it. You clearly don't understand how to make it work logically, so just stop.

Is it bad that while this annoys me, the most annoying thing for me so far is the fact that even after all we have learned and after all this time and after seeing what Venat did…..we still scowl and make angry faces whenever Lahabrea is mentioned.

[Brinne]

This drives me CRAZY! I've come back to this doomed world yet again and am making friends with even more of the population, people with connections to those in power, and I still say nothing to anyone about what I know about what is coming for their world. Just nodding like a slack-jawed idiot while I fight to save them from monsters below the ground while ignoring the existence of the monster in space above them.

Please just STOP with the time travel, writers, just stop it. You clearly don't understand how to make it work logically, so just stop.

Ah, but we're careful to establish that we're actually helping them in the past to benefit us, so it's perfectly consistent. Otherwise, why would we bother?

I also agree with your earlier post, by the way, that while EW has other flaws, Venat and the dissonance surrounding her is the lynchpin. As I've said, there's a lot of elements in EW I truly loved, and I don't agree with a lot of the common complaints otherwise lodged against it (Hermes is great! Zenos is great! The Garlemald zone was great! I do not mourn the loss of a Garlemald expansion! I don't have any particular issue with time travel as a plot device, or even, necessarily, time loops!) Venat herself as is could have been great, without actually changing a single thing about her, if not for the narrative obsessing over and contorting basically everything, including the characterization of the cast, out of abject terror you won't see her in a positive light.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

This would actually be interesting. Create incorruptible Meteia to counter the Meteia that went insane.

Plot twist: that's our character.

[anhaato]

Question for the thread;

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it? I'm curious, this isn't even a "well if YOU know so much why don't YOU apply for a job on the msq team!?" type of drag, I just think a lot of people in here have interesting takes on where they would've liked the story to go, and I'd like to hear from anyone who feels like succinctly laying out their do-over plan.

[Nekokaori]

Question for the thread;

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it? I'm curious, this isn't even a "well if YOU know so much why don't YOU apply for a job on the msq team!?" type of drag, I just think a lot of people in here have interesting takes on where they would've liked the story to go, and I'd like to hear from anyone who feels like succinctly laying out their do-over plan.

okay First, I would make the final days end of days I would make the first scene not instantly going to sharlyen i would have fandial active another ziggurate in a place we can get like off the coast of Kugane or something we show up fight the lunar and ziggy stuff, fandial does his asshole lines. Then we are sent to sharlyen to get information learn first of what could the final days be.

Then I would cut out every second of joke and bullshit eating meals at a table where a girl takes a pickle off a burger, then I would have us after getting information that we need to go to the place and time "elipis" to try to handle the threat or learn how to deal with it but in order to do it we need certain things from thav and radz at han by taking out its ziggy and others. Then we do that and we learn what we need is a portal and the tempered imperil units getting sent to attack every where by lord zenos so we are sent to deal with hiss ass there we go in through the dungeons a play fight with zenos that he gets away from then we fight anima as a trail fight.

Then after the final fight with anima he drops a piece of "orgin shard" something linking us to elpis but its a fragment piece and the other piece is being held by Zodiark thus we go to the moon meet the leoprics learning all about them (very similar to how it is i saw no issues there) then we get the pieces and go back to sharlyen then we go meet and kill venat to get the final piece all while the world is constatly burning, Then Lunar anima and magi sisters show up and lord zenos kills all our friends and their final sacfice is activing a rune or something porting us and lord zenos to elpis were we learn all about OURSELFS and about mete, where we work togeather with the ancients to take her out and thus the end finally happans we get a reset to explore and fight one another as a rivally where we challange who can kill the most in the new expansions

btw that was a rush so ya i know its not perfect but if i had the time they had i could flush that out and detail it so much better

[Brinne]

When Emet-selch was like "gg well played" to Venat in Ultima Thule I was actually about to become the Joker. My man, my beautiful fellow, she threw you into a MEAT GRINDER for 12,000 YEARS where you were miserable and lonely and that is all you have to say about it?! You staked your whole life upon an ideal that was doomed to fail because this woman did not trust you with vital information!! I would not be coy with theater speechcraft, the only proper thing to say is "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

I was mostly okay with that scene (with some reservations about how Venat's actions were deliberately and transparently being softened, again, for the reasons you described - oh Venat, you card! I bet you were laughing at me the whole time, and even threw in a joke during the 12K years of torment you inflicted upon me! Say, was the joke Shadowbringers? Hilarious!!!) - but I could sort of write that off as overall consistent with Emet's characterization as ridiculously soft-hearted, and his demonstrated sensitivity toward the WoL's feelings. Then the thread clarified that his "as a show of respect to the last of us" declaration was about Venat, and I proceeded to flip tables.

[Caurcas]

Question for the thread;

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it? I'm curious, this isn't even a "well if YOU know so much why don't YOU apply for a job on the msq team!?" type of drag, I just think a lot of people in here have interesting takes on where they would've liked the story to go, and I'd like to hear from anyone who feels like succinctly laying out their do-over plan.

1. Make Dynamis anathema to the Ancients.
2. Change Meteion into something more interesting, or have her get infected by something that causes the sound/aetheric rather than being the cause. I suggest something like the old C'tan from 40k. Star eating vampires.
3. Make the 3rd sacrifice into the current spoken races.
4. Change Venat's motivation into protecting them.
5. Give Zodiark a flaw that forces him to consume and corrupt the aether of the Ancients within as time goes on. Resulting in extreme tempering similar to what we see in current races. Basically have him as a flawed prototype that was rushed into use.
6. Leave dead characters dead.

[PawPaw]

where we work togeather with the ancients to take her out and thus the end finally happans we get a reset to explore and fight one another as a rivally where we challange who can kill the most in the new expansions

This would actually be quite cathartic. FFXIV: Battle Royale OR FFXIV: The Sundering 2: Electric Boogaloo

Then the thread clarified that his "as a show of respect to the last of us" declaration was about Venat, and I proceeded to flip tables.

I remember this! I was ready to riot. I was not okay with that scene and when it was revealed that he was referencing her and not us, I wanted to spit fire.

Question for the thread;

If you were to take over Ishikawa or Oda's position in the story and rewrite Endwalker to "fix" the story, or an expansion pre-Endwalker, how would you go about it? I'm curious, this isn't even a "well if YOU know so much why don't YOU apply for a job on the msq team!?" type of drag, I just think a lot of people in here have interesting takes on where they would've liked the story to go, and I'd like to hear from anyone who feels like succinctly laying out their do-over plan.

I like this question, I feel as though paragraphs could be written about it but off the top of my head, if the time-travel element had to be included as some narrative lynchpin then my key change would have been to wipe the memories of all of the ancients who were "in the know". Leaving Venat with knowledge that she did not use to help her people is the point at which I completely turn on the story and cannot find a way back to being at peace with it. Take all of their memories away and let events play out as they would and I would not feel a fraction of the anger that I do now. I would just be sad but that is something I can accept and move forward with.