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

[Corue]

I thought I was going crazy. I really enjoyed the plot and then I come online and everyone is saying it's the worst thing ever written. I'm not saying it's fantastic but it's a lot better than what people are trying to make it out to be.

But I will say that I was not a fan of the big evil that started the entire plot was a one-off character that was introduced over halfway through the expansion.

[Rulakir]

My problem is EW left me permanently heartbroken unless something changes in the future. My favorite characters were betrayed, forced to suffer for millennia, and nothing that happened at the end made me feel any better. My "closure" is they're dead and gone, so is their world and their perpetrator is celebrated. Fantastic. Then we get the NieR crossover where we learn things were even worse than we thought, although, I appreciate the added context we didn't get in EW.

I see my favorite characters and rather than being filled with joy it's ache and an unfulfilled desire to want to help them. There was no catharsis. Meanwhile, we've got Thancred joking about not having any scars to boast about, which seems like a meta commentary on the Scions not experiencing consequences. Yet they're supposed to be our poster children for overcoming suffering and despair while we're told the Ancients, some of the most tragic characters in the game, didn't know anything of either. Oh, okay.

I thought I was going crazy. I really enjoyed the plot and then I come online and everyone is saying it's the worst thing ever written. I'm not saying it's fantastic but it's a lot better than what people are trying to make it out to be.

Is this the only place you've looked? Generally r/ffxiv gushes about the game and I've heard Twitter is the same.

[BrokentoothMarch]

I thought I was going crazy. I really enjoyed the plot and then I come online and everyone is saying it's the worst thing ever written. I'm not saying it's fantastic but it's a lot better than what people are trying to make it out to be.

But I will say that I was not a fan of the big evil that started the entire plot was a one-off character that was introduced over halfway through the expansion.

SE, not just the XIV team, for some reason loves to do this "the evil you thought was the main guy is not the main guy there's ANOTHER more evil main guy behind it all" trope again and again and again. We've seen it every expansion too. I definitely disliked EW, but I'll admit that it became actual hatred just from the fatigue of the reuse of tropes and completing the entirety of the arc with some contrived use of Power of Friendship in it's most raw, unoriginal form? I guess I was allowed to have more nuance.

[DevonEllwood]

This week's ramblings

The moon! Yeah it can be seen in Elpis and though my first though is it's an oversight because EW shenanigans. I just wanted to reflect on the moon being a spaceship again. It's a ship with it's own pilots who communicated with Sharlyan, and who also already plotted a course to other planets. Escape to another planet was considered the B plan but so many resources were put into it that it seems more the A plan than fighting Hydaelyn to "prove ourselves" and use her to power another ship. Even the rabbits only found a few livable planets and they weren't even sure about. B plan was only meant to buy more time, but as it's been mentioned before, Meteion would have just nuked whatever planet they landed on if the planet's inhabitants didn't do it themselves. Both of these plans are incredibly stupid. But Venat wanted to deal with Meteion her way and her people were too dummy so she wanted new ones. Run away from the problem until the odds might be better in your favor, this is the A plan. But I'm probably thinking too much about it, sorry Yoshida. I'll try not to use my brain to make sense of this story.

Dynamis would have worked if they took a completely different approach to it. We already have stories of people exceeding their capabilities, lifting multiple times their weight in times of desperation, etc. With adventurers constantly throwing themselves into combat situation, this could be something they had over the Ancients, who only fight on rare occasions outside of a few individuals. Doing so may have likened the Ancients more to the Dragons, which were a sad tragedy and we can't have that. Instead we get...the power of friendship and emotions. Why.

I swear if they start putting story in random places like in other games, I am officially done caring about the story.

I don't need a "complex" story. Some of the best stories are extremely basic at their core, but it's what the writers do with that story that matters. Most of the expansions have been extremely simple and we've heard these stories so many times before. What makes them interesting is the finer details put into that simple story. EW was not a simple story and I think that's one of it's major problems. It puts in too much effort making its base story be complex.

Talking about characters that didn't get fleshed out enough, what about a concept? I was really excited for the Geiger-ish looking stuff shown in the trailer. I was wanting to see more of it and I guess I assumed some of it would be in the open world or other instances? I don't know what I expected. I guess I expected something darker for "end of the world" Since EW I have watched no trailers, no liveletters. I used to love them, but I've just kind of given up caring that much anymore. I still care, I'm just incredibly disappointed. I've had one friend finish patch 6.1 and he said it was "pretty good" He also liked EW, but more or less sees it as a "stupid, goofy anime". Still considered Venat crazy, that's pretty consistent among us.

EW, cherry picking at its absolute finest. Only the sweetest, most hypocritical cherries for our protagonists.

I actually got Ensinger a few days ago in trial roulette for the first time. My brain must have completely blocked it out because I completely forgot the absolute, for lack of a better word, cringe scion scene. Someone stated they loved it in the chat. Could I have said nothing? Yes, but I didn't. I said I hated it. I got called mean. All those memories of this godsforsaken story just came back to me and how EW could have been so much better. The really good parts are made all that much worse knowing there was good writing in the expansion. But it was just so little.

I thought I was going crazy. I really enjoyed the plot and then I come online and everyone is saying it's the worst thing ever written. I'm not saying it's fantastic but it's a lot better than what people are trying to make it out to be.

I envy you. Continue to do what Yoshida asks of us and don't think too much about it.

[Reap00]

A forum of negativity and complainers bashes a great story/expansion. Obviously nothing to see here. This consensus is in the minority. Enjoy your safe haven gentlemen.

[BrokentoothMarch]

A forum of negativity and complainers bashes a great story/expansion. Obviously nothing to see here. This consensus is in the minority. Enjoy your safe haven gentlemen.

Did you seriously just come here to preach from your high horse with passive-aggression? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, enjoying the great expansion? Or is the existence of people who don't like this so egregious to your own self that you feel compelled to come in and make a potshot? To say nothing of what could be extracted from your sentence:

"You're in the minority, so your opinion doesn't matter!"

Thank you for your meaningful contribution. You will be forgotten quickly, Generic Catgirl #146123.

[PawPaw]

I swear if they start putting story in random places like in other games, I am officially done caring about the story..

I take it you haven't seen the NieR: Reincarnation Crossover event then? Might wanna just...not if you haven't already.

A forum of negativity and complainers bashes a great story/expansion. Obviously nothing to see here. This consensus is in the minority. Enjoy your safe haven gentlemen.

*Yawn* Do try harder.

[KizuyaKatogami]

A forum of negativity and complainers bashes a great story/expansion. Obviously nothing to see here. This consensus is in the minority. Enjoy your safe haven gentlemen.

“Great story.” Tell me you have no taste without telling me you have no taste.

[aveyond-dreams]

A forum of negativity and complainers bashes a great story/expansion. Obviously nothing to see here. This consensus is in the minority. Enjoy your safe haven gentlemen.

Convoluted time travel shenanigans, negligible character development, boring antagonists, another round of fake-outs and lack of meaning to any sacrifices made by the main party, and for the most part failing to capture the “end of the world” feeling outside all too fleeting segments, padded out in between by high school manga plot elements.

If Shadowbringers is universally considered to be a great expansion, then Endwalker cannot be put in the same basket when it comes to story.

[Skyborne]

I thought I was coping and seething for the last six months, but every now and then, I am reminded that there are plenty who are equally upset about naysayers. And given how huge the thread became, I would not be surprised if the staff had seen some of our posts.