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

[CrownySuccubus]

I actually liked the lore introduced/retconned in Shadowbringers. It made me wish that had been the plan from the start, because we possibly could have been spared the "Cackling, Shallow Jerkwads Ascians" who'd been so thoroughly uninteresting before.

The only thing that it really "ruined" in my estimation was that by firmly tying the Calamities to the Ascians' goals, it retroactively meant that they are SO bad at planning that they could only manage 1 Rejoining every several thousand years, and even then, they screwed up at least 1 of those attempts.

[Caurcas]

I actually liked the lore introduced/retconned in Shadowbringers. It made me wish that had been the plan from the start, because we possibly could have been spared the "Cackling, Shallow Jerkwads Ascians" who'd been so thoroughly uninteresting before.

The only thing that it really "ruined" in my estimation was that by firmly tying the Calamities to the Ascians' goals, it retroactively meant that they are SO bad at planning that they could only manage 1 Rejoining every several thousand years, and even then, they screwed up at least 1 of those attempts.

The Ascian were always the weakest element of the pre-ShB plot. However, other political entities and mysteries were much stronger and interesting lore wise. Garlemald was an interesting nation state, with an arc counter to that of others. It got turned into generic evil empire designed to fail. You have plot points like Dalmasca and Bojza that were far more interesting than the first, or the ancients. Ancient civilizations like Mhach and Allag and their deals with those beyond. SE had built an interesting, and political world with tangible world building. They threw this away in favor of hitting reset and belittling what came before. By introducing the Ancients and the shards they removed mystery from the world. Its all such a bizarre 180 on narrative direction.

[Lauront]

I actually liked the lore introduced/retconned in Shadowbringers. It made me wish that had been the plan from the start

I've always liked them, and particularly Elidibus and Lahabrea, to the point I would probably have dropped this game in their absence because of how lacklustre I otherwise found ARR, but I'll agree with the sentiment that it would've been good if there was a consistent thread throughout their writing, as it would've avoided a lot of the bizarre writing around tempering to explain away Lahabrea and Nabriales's zeal, and yielded a better experience overall.

The only thing that it really "ruined" in my estimation was that by firmly tying the Calamities to the Ascians' goals, it retroactively meant that they are SO bad at planning that they could only manage 1 Rejoining every several thousand years, and even then, they screwed up at least 1 of those attempts.

To be fair, that kind of thing happening to the entire world was a very novel state of affairs (particularly with the Void), and they do require the Source to recover from them so it can be primed for the next one. I don't think the writers did a good job covering off this element, especially as they wanted to hasten the pace as of the 7th, but they never explain why.

[RyuDragnier]

To be fair, that kind of thing happening to the entire world was a very novel state of affairs (particularly with the Void), and they do require the Source to recover from them so it can be primed for the next one. I don't think the writers did a good job covering off this element, especially as they wanted to hasten the pace as of the 7th, but they never explain why.

It seemed to me that Louisoix's halting of Bahamut did enough to prevent a ton of damage, so rather than having to wait, the Ascians were able to speed up. As for why they keep escalating and refuse to wait for us to die however...we can blame Nabriales for that.

He was explicitly told by Elidibus to not engage us, as we were potentially no longer a threat after losing our Blessing of Light, and might have had the way to kill them. They could have waited things out from that point on and possibly won because we'd never get a chance to try it out. But because Nabriales lunged for us, we discovered how the trick worked, and possibly could have developed a method to reach them in the Rift from there. It became a race against us to succeed in the next Rejoining before we found a way to halt them for good. All thanks to an overzealous Nabriales.