In regards to something involving the main cast

[KizuyaKatogami]

No they didn't, they moved the bodies out of the way and sped up time so they decomposed faster. They're not happy about it by any means, in large part because the creations involved never got chance to fulfil whatever purpose they were designed for, but it didn't remotely resemble a funeral until they asked for our input.

They paid respect to them though did they not? Afaik the only thing we contributed was the flower thing. They still valued creations though and we see this in the various side quests around Elpis. Regardless my overall point is seemingly going ignored. We the WoL engage in slaughtering animals for entertainment.What the ancients do is nowhere near as bad as that lol.

Vessels within which life once flowed; cheated of purpose, stilled and cold. Unto the land you now return, the fuel 'pon which new life shall burn.
That was a beautiful service. I like to think it brought some joy to their departed souls, much as one feels when receiving a thoughtful gift.
Yes, the flowers were the perfect addition. How fortunate we are to have this knowledgeable familiar in our midst!

Note the use of the word addition here. Its an addition to their already existing funeral rites.So unless the only thing making a funeral is the flowers, youre pretty incorrect on this.

[Rulakir]

The Ancients are held to an unrealistic level of morality. I guarantee you would have an abysmal view of humanity if you only judged them based on those who work in animal testing. Hell, there are plenty of testimonials from people who worked in slaughterhouses that went vegan after their experiences there. We know for a fact everyone in Elpis wasn't heartless and that the Ancients as a whole weren't either otherwise nobody would've objected to the third sacrifice.

It's fine if you don't like the Ancients, but it's tiring when they're held up to a standard that neither the sundered or real life mankind meet. They weren't perfect and according to EW that's supposed to be a good thing.

As for Y'shtola, I don't care what kind of personal spin you want to put on it, the cognitive dissonance with her familiars vs. Elpis was shocking.

[Lauront]

The Ancients are held to an unrealistic level of morality. I guarantee you would have an abysmal view of humanity if you only judged them based on those who work in animal testing. Hell, there are plenty of testimonials from people who worked in slaughterhouses that went vegan after their experiences there. We know for a fact everyone in Elpis wasn't heartless and that the Ancients as a whole weren't either otherwise nobody would've objected to the third sacrifice.

It's fine if you don't like the Ancients, but it's tiring when they're held up to a standard that neither the sundered or real life mankind meet. They weren't perfect and according to EW that's supposed to be a good thing.

As for Y'shtola, I don't care what kind of personal spin you want to put on it, the cognitive dissonance with her familiars vs. Elpis was shocking.

It's okay when 'we' do it: the game.

[Jandor]

It's fine if you don't like the Ancients, but it's tiring when they're held up to a standard that neither the sundered or real life mankind meet. They weren't perfect and according to EW that's supposed to be a good thing.

"With great power comes great responsibility."

The Ancients are fine people for the most part, but they're also capable of inflicting far more damage than the sundered or real life mankind.

[sidurgu-12]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

The Ancients are fine people for the most part, but they're also capable of inflicting far more damage than the sundered or real life mankind.

great example- meteion. created an entire race based around a misworded question results in the planets near extinction.

as for being held to unrealistic standards, its called for when they can create genuine life on a whim and destroy it because somethings slightly off. plus, they kind of ask for that level considering they call themselves the stewards of the star striving for perfection.

besides that elpis showed theyre not really following that creed anymore. or at the least, starting to lose their way.

[MikkoAkure]

It's fine if you don't like the Ancients, but it's tiring when they're held up to a standard that neither the sundered or real life mankind meet. They weren't perfect and according to EW that's supposed to be a good thing.

As for Y'shtola, I don't care what kind of personal spin you want to put on it, the cognitive dissonance with her familiars vs. Elpis was shocking.

What cognitive dissonance? I just rewatched that cutscene and the first thing Y'shtola does when the nixies come back is walk up to the afflicted one, bend down, put her hand on it and say "Thank you little one, you did well." Then after the thing with the imps, and some exposition, she bends back down to the afflicted one and her expression softens as she says "Rest now, little ones." as she disperses their aether. That is an objective take on what actually happens in the cutscene. Which cutscene did you watch? In your mind, is everything the Scions do at all just simply vile and you're subconsciously willing to ignore all other details to support that idea?

But I guess in order for you to not see a double-standard, she needs to be on her knees weeping, lamenting the loss of her puddle people while lighting candles and saying prayers for their dearly departed aether? Does she need to go into the Void by herself to make sure it's safe, god forbid she hurt a familiar?

I also guess by that metric then, Cid is also a horrible, irredeemable human being because we find out in ARR that magitek reapers can think and he uses one up while shooting it at a tower and the Garleans are equally bad because like Y'shtola, they created life and send them into dangerous places.

[KizuyaKatogami]

What cognitive dissonance? I just rewatched that cutscene and the first thing Y'shtola does when the nixies come back is walk up to the afflicted one, bend down, put her hand on it and say "Thank you little one, you did well." Then after the thing with the imps, and some exposition, she bends back down to the afflicted one and her expression softens as she says "Rest now, little ones." as she disperses their aether. That is an objective take on what actually happens in the cutscene. Which cutscene did you watch?

But I guess in order for you to not see a double-standard, she needs to be on her knees weeping, lamenting the loss of her puddle people while lighting candles and saying prayers for their dearly departed aether? Does she need to go into the Void by herself to make sure it's safe, god forbid she hurt a familiar? I'm not sure if you guys really believe what you're saying or if in your minds everything the Scions do is vile yet at the same time if someone questions the morality of the Ancients your response is "no one's perfect".

I also guess by that metric then, Cid is also a horrible, irredeemable human being because we find out in ARR that magitek reapers can think and he uses one up while shooting it at a tower and the Garleans are equally bad because like Y'shtola, they created life and send them into dangerous places.

But we’re not the ones bashing the ancients for it. People are saying the ancients are bad because of their lack of concern over their creations. But we see that they held funeral rites for them. People overlook that and still bash them for it, yet this patch Yshtola does the same exact thing that they do and she gets 0 flak for it. THATS why people are bringing it up. Ever since Ew release people bashed them for their “treatment” towards their creations yet when the protagonists do the same no one says a thing. That’s the double standard people are talking about.

[Nilroreo]

Snip

So there's this game I played sometime back called Death Stranding, some of you might've heard of it I'm sure. So, something cute this game likes to do is discouraging murder of hostile npcs, as dead bodies essentially function as atom bombs if left on their own for too long, and so the game instead encourages other methods like guns with non-lethal rounds. Now, every time I entered an enemy camp with one of these things, I effortlessly mow them down, they fall flat, and I win... but somethings wrong. Sure I stopped everyone and I'm not in danger of being blown to bits, but this sensation doesn't really feel too different from killing anyone in any other game. For all intents and purposes, I've just murdered these men, and no amount of sugarcoating is going to remove that sensation.

This scenario with Y'shtola reminds me a lot of this. You can soften the blow for yourself by suggesting it's more like 'sticking your hand in there' all you want, but what I witnessed was functionally no different than watching a live animal violently writhing in pain as a result of her actions. How would it even know how to do that if it truly couldn't feel anything?

From my perspective, it's less about what you did and more the approach to how you did it.

I think the importance is more in how she reacts afterwards than how she acts at the time.

that the heroic characters both treat those around them better and typically have a benevolent (or at least neutral) end goal in mind.

So, to translate, Their words hold more weight than their actions. Consider this hypothetical. Assume Y'shtola had cheered upon the experiment turning out to be a success, then turned around to leave only to be reminded by the others that the nixie is still writhing on the ground, Y'shtola responds with "Ugh, fine," snaps her fingers and dismisses it. How would you feel in that scenario? After all, nothing about this situation is functionally any different. They've successfully determined the warding scales need some modifying in order to allow safe passage through the 13th, and they're now one step closer to discovering how to reliably jump between worlds. Her "Benevolent end goal" hasn't changed, so why would her demeanor suddenly be enough to alter the way you personally choose to perceive her actions?

[MikkoAkure]

But we’re not the ones bashing the ancients for it. People are saying the ancients are bad because of their lack of concern over their creations. But we see that they held funeral rites for them. People overlook that and still bash them for it, yet this patch Yshtola does the same exact thing that they do and she gets 0 flak for it. THATS why people are bringing it up. Ever since Ew release people bashed them for their “treatment” towards their creations yet when the protagonists do the same no one says a thing. That’s the double standard people are talking about.

I see the whole thing with the Ancients and their morality as more than black and white. I also don't see any sort of "double-standard" with how anything is portrayed since everything is more complex than that.

The Ancients may have funerals for their creations, but the question around it isn't about whether or not they feel bad or good or uncaring or sad, it's whether or not they should have been doing any of that in the first place. To the writers' credit, the game does not force an opinion onto you or the WoL on the matter. There is no "adamant and shocked" response to the butterflies like you suggested there was in your OP. But that is the world we step into when we go to Elpis and the setting for the next part of the story where we meet someone who cares probably a bit too much, because the emotional weight he carries over the morality of the whole thing drives him over the edge. We are shown different examples of what they're doing and for everything they made that's beautiful and particularly benign like the aforementioned butterflies or migratory birds (for some reason), there's the potentially horrifying like all of Pandaemonium, making sharks with legs because it's "trendy", or the fact that they're making sentient beings that are reminiscent of the Lupin and it us up for us, the player, to pass our own judgements on the matter.

But again, the creations are held to a different standard to familiars and Elpis kept bringing that up over and over. As a familiar on Elpis, you are an "it" in the eyes of many of the researchers and the man, Hades himself. The creations at Elpis are living beings meant to experience life and multiply and take part in the Circle of Life on the surface of the world, bearing souls from the Lifestream that may have even been Ancients since the Ancients talk a lot of the importance of returning to the Star and becoming one with it again. The nixies are aether combined with some water, a crystal, and a gemstone. And even then, it's not like Y'shtola dismissed hers after using them, uncaring.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I see the whole thing with the Ancients and their morality as more than black and white. I also don't see any sort of "double-standard" with how anything is portrayed since everything is more complex than that.

The Ancients may have funerals for their creations, but the question around it isn't about whether or not they feel bad or good or uncaring or sad, it's whether or not they should have been doing any of that in the first place. To the writers' credit, the game does not force an opinion onto you or the WoL on the matter. There is no "adamant and shocked" response to the butterflies like you suggested there was in your OP. But that is the world we step into when we go to Elpis and the setting for the next part of the story where we meet someone who cares probably a bit too much, because the emotional weight he carries over the morality of the whole thing drives him over the edge. We are shown different examples of what they're doing and for everything they made that's beautiful and particularly benign like the aforementioned butterflies or migratory birds (for some reason), there's the potentially horrifying like all of Pandaemonium, making sharks with legs because it's "trendy", or the fact that they're making sentient beings that are reminiscent of the Lupin and it us up for us, the player, to pass our own judgements on the matter.

But again, the creations are held to a different standard to familiars and Elpis kept bringing that up over and over. As a familiar on Elpis, you are an "it" in the eyes of many of the researchers and the man, Hades himself. The creations at Elpis are living beings meant to experience life and multiply and take part in the Circle of Life on the surface of the world, bearing souls from the Lifestream that may have even been Ancients since the Ancients talk a lot of the importance of returning to the Star and becoming one with it again. The nixies are aether combined with some water, a crystal, and a gemstone. And even then, it's not like Y'shtola dismissed hers after using them, uncaring.

Familiars can gain souls too though no? Look at Alpha for example. Also all those animals in the colosseum, they could have gained souls as well, since the lifestream seems to pick at random what gains a soul,i don’t know if you knew that but not every creation gained a soul.And even if a creation gained a soul, would it really be any different than that of a wild animal? Again, i bring up the colosseum where we engage in slaughtering animals for other peoples entertainment. Or Eden where we summon primals only to slay them immediately, or the diadem text where we essentially almost rendered an entire animal species extinct. The ancients were doing what they were doing for the betterment of the star. A lot of what we did was for…far less than that.