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

[RedaAlert]

This whole "we are the silent majority, while they are the vocal minority" is ridiculous and not backed by facts at all.

I may not like G'raha the way this game wants me to like him, but to say he is not a fan favorite is pretty, what twitch culture would label as, copium.

Ofcourse no character is meant to be universally loved, and if you hate him all power to you, and if you like him all power to you. But again, that character was ranked high in many polls, among them is the famitsu magazine popularity poll which he came 2nd, who is also extremely popular among the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean audience, that even the Chinese audience gave him a nick name of "little red cat", not to mention the English audience, and not to mention all the thousands of fanarts each with thousands of likes and such. Sorry to shatter expectations, but he is extremely popular, even among big streamers on twitch.

But if you want to believe that he is hated by every soul in the game but the people are scared to voice their dislike cause they think his fans are assassins who want to take them out if they uttered a word against him, you are allowed to think that too. But we can also be honest with ourselves, the character has his moments where you know he is good, and if he only had those moments, no one would've felt offended by him.

[Lauront]

This whole "we are the silent majority, while they are the vocal minority" is ridiculous and not backed by facts at all.

I may not like G'raha the way this game wants me to like him, but to say he is not a fan favorite is pretty, what twitch culture would label as, copium.

Ofcourse no character is meant to be universally loved, and if you hate him all power to you, and if you like him all power to you. But again, that character was ranked high in many polls, among them is the famitsu magazine popularity poll which he came 2nd, who is also extremely popular among the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean audience, that even the Chinese audience gave him a nick name of "little red cat", not to mention the English audience, and not to mention all the thousands of fanarts each with thousands of likes and such. Sorry to shatter expectations, but he is extremely popular, even among big streamers on twitch.

But if you want to believe that he is hated by every soul in the game but the people are scared to voice their dislike cause they think his fans are assassins who want to take them out if they uttered a word against him, you are allowed to think that too. But we can also be honest with ourselves, the character has his moments where you know he is good, and if he only had those moments, no one would've felt offended by him.

Reads as rather exaggerated to make a point to me, and rather full of sweeping proclamations, if I am honest. Especially that last point. It's simple: the fact that he's liked by a fairly large segment of the playerbase does not mean it's a majority. And that's all there is to it.

[RedaAlert]

Reads as rather exaggerated to make a point to me, and rather full of sweeping proclamations, if I am honest. Especially that last point. It's simple: the fact that he's liked by a fairly large segment of the playerbase does not mean it's a majority. And that's all there is to it.

First I never said he was loved by the majority, and my guy, hate him if you want I don't care, and if you want to believe all I said was a lie do so, but I am someone who play off facts and logic, and facts don't care much for your personal feelings or wishes, his CGI art that was posted on twitter is literally the most liked tweet that cursed twitter had, what do you expect people's reaction to a character who is affectionate to them?, I am someone that literally don't care whether he is in or out, but he is massively loved, I don't need to offer evidence and stats, this here is a venting forum, people offer their criticism and their dislikes, but this forum is not the only source of information you can get from the fanbase about how they view certain elements of the game.

[Lauront]

who play off facts and logic, and facts don't care much for your personal feelings or wishes

Good thing I never claimed that they do - much as they don't particularly care for yours, either.

I don't need to offer evidence and stats, this here is a venting forum, people offer their criticism and their dislikes, but this forum is not the only source of information you can get from the fanbase about how they view certain elements of the game.

Hardly a revelation. I am well aware of the polling etc. done. It's still just indicative of certain subsections of the community... but since you're not trying to make the claim that it is a majority of the playerbase we're talking about, there is nothing further to discuss on that point.

I think the story is suffering a bit in the hands of Natsuko Ishikawa. She seems to like to bring us to emotional lows with ultimately happy endings and our close friends (Scions) never seem to be in real danger in her hands. Now I am not saying she is a bad writer. She made me care about the people in the world of FFXIV a lot and that's huge. Caring about the people makes me care about the story.

But it's time to let some Banri Oda influence seep back in. He had great world building and wasn't afraid to kill characters. A balance between them would be ideal. Oda to threaten the characters and build out the world, Ishikawa to make me care by writing said characters and establishing their motives. Maybe with more Oda the Final Days would have felt more apocalyptic.

I think there was some knee jerk reaction against killing characters after Heavensward and that was fair at the time, honestly. If we'd kept killing off NPCs like that we would be in the opposite situation, where we don't dare care about anyone and deaths have lost any emotional impact.

As for G'raha I like him a lot. He's not my favorite character but he's fun. Some of the issue with him is his energetic enthusiasm can make it hard to remember he's hundreds of years old and ran a society.

I agree with this. I have a strong bias for solid world-building over character-centric stories, if I am honest, and I think Oda does the former better. I am not sure to what degree EW is really reflective of Ishikawa's work, as there seems to be a myriad of factors which compromised the quality, but I'll say I preferred the sort of tension-laden writing that Maehiro brought to life in HW.

It's not, though. Someone isn't supporting murder by joining the Dark Brotherhood in an Elder Scrolls game. They're not supporting incest by rooting for Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Fiction is fiction. Something people immerse themselves in temporarily and I daresay the fondly looked upon 'majority' of people don't overanalyse such scenarios to the same degree as those who declare everything to be an 'issue'.

It just sucks out a lot of the fun out of fictional settings as far as I'm concerned. Much like it did when people who played World of Warcraft attacked people for liking the 'wrong' playable races or faction.

Quite - or playing the Sith in Star Wars games. It's just a fun form of escapism. Doesn't mean I support everything the character does - and at least, unlike with Venat, there isn't this restriction in how you can respond as your character to their actions, or this pretence that the actions were unambiguously good.

[AziraSyuren]

First I never said he was loved by the majority, and my guy, hate him if you want I don't care, and if you want to believe all I said was a lie do so, but I am someone who play off facts and logic, and facts don't care much for your personal feelings or wishes, his CGI art that was posted on twitter is literally the most liked tweet that cursed twitter had, what do you expect people's reaction to a character who is affectionate to them?, I am someone that literally don't care whether he is in or out, but he is massively loved, I don't need to offer evidence and stats, this here is a venting forum, people offer their criticism and their dislikes, but this forum is not the only source of information you can get from the fanbase about how they view certain elements of the game.

It really is pretty hefty copium to pretend that G'raha isn't the most well-liked Scion by a pretty decent margin. How could he not be? He had one of the strongest character arcs in one of the most consistently well-written parts of the story. It's the same reasons Emet-Selch was so loved. An expansion of lukewarm characterization doesn't erase anything that came prior. He wasn't at all made meaningfully worse by EW, especially if you actually paid attention to his character in ShB. He just wasn't made better like, say, Estinien and Alisae were.

[Lauront]

It really is pretty hefty copium to pretend that G'raha isn't the most well-liked Scion by a pretty decent margin. How could he not be? He had one of the strongest character arcs in one of the most consistently well-written parts of the story. It's the same reasons Emet-Selch was so loved. An expansion of lukewarm characterization doesn't erase anything that came prior. He wasn't at all made meaningfully worse by EW, especially if you actually paid attention to his character in ShB. He just wasn't made better like, say, Estinien and Alisae were.

All I see is people saying they don't like the character for their own reasons. And there's existing fans of his here also who are claiming they dislike the trajectory he took as of 5.4.

So do explain whose "copium" this is?

[RedaAlert]

It really is pretty hefty copium to pretend that G'raha isn't the most well-liked Scion by a pretty decent margin. How could he not be? He had one of the strongest character arcs in one of the most consistently well-written parts of the story. It's the same reasons Emet-Selch was so loved. An expansion of lukewarm characterization doesn't erase anything that came prior. He wasn't at all made meaningfully worse by EW, especially if you actually paid attention to his character in ShB. He just wasn't made better like, say, Estinien and Alisae were.

Sadly people highlight the bad more than the good with characters, while I didn't like his 5.4 or 5.5 versions, his 6.0 character, for me, was phenomenal, he and only HE (honorable mention: estinien) was the most reliant and competent out of ALL the scions saving dozens of people repeatedly, he had many badass moments in EW, moments that was highlighted in the whole expansion, during ultima thule, while that zone is a subject of controversy, his speech where he project the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" unto himself was also phenomenal, the only civilization among all we dealt with that looked convinced by what is being offered were the omicron.

But oh nyo he ate a boorger and had sparkly eyes for 30 seconds, bad character > : (

[aveyond-dreams]

But we can also be honest with ourselves, the character has his moments where you know he is good, and if he only had those moments, no one would've felt offended by him.

This is the point - G'raha Tia did indeed have a good character arc to him and I generally liked/respected him as the Crystal Exarch. Then they proceeded to turn him into a joke I could no longer take seriously.

Character is good and well written -> Character arc finishes -> Character becomes annoying fanservice -> Character becomes insufferable -> I start skipping cutscenes.

In any case those of us who were drawn to the game in its era of deeper storytelling and more complex gameplay have a high risk of being pushed out by the twitter fanclub crowd that is largely content with the game being reduced to visual novel status. We don't want to cede this game completely over to them. We want our mainline Final Fantasy game back to the way it should be.

That means:
Strong cast of visually and personality-wise diverse characters
Decent gameplay
Believable Plot
Meaningful and consistent character progression and development - if someone is "done" get them off the screen and let another character do some growing.
No forever characters like Sylvanas, Y'shtola, or G'raha Tia.

The twitter crowd will absolutely latch on to the next pretty boy or poster girl they make next. All they have to do is make one.