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

[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.