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

[Lauront]

Personally I doubt they were ever going with them shifting to a mentality of bleeding the star dry. There may have been (and probably was) a change from an original script, but I don't think it was along those lines.

As can be seen below, their explicit goal is to resume stewardship of their star, and the sacrifice was through surplus life engendered through their efforts, after Zodiark re-vitalised it.



The Ascian change in the rites is deliberately to cause chaos, to enable them to cause Calamities and proceed with the Rejoinings to restore the star, as they seek to revert both it and the souls of the sundered to their original state. In their view, leaving it in its broken state is worse than some temporary damage it'll recover from.

The problem with the post-Elpis cutscene is it brushes over a lot of the nuance established through the earlier sources - even the third stage of sacrifices had divided them in debate, whereas that scene just presents some distraught, grief-struck ancient strawmen being given a rather tone-deaf lecture that doesn't explain the basis of her concerns and so no doubt seems crazy, and makes it seem like they were just going to keep sacrificing themselves to "perfect" their star, no doubt to make it look like the Plenty/final area of the Dead Ends.

This story makes my heart feel like it's on fire.......dear mommy? I have to say, in reality,the authoritarian "dear daddy" ......They'll do all the things Hydaelyn has done
For example: saying "All for life" but actually destroying it. You have no choice but to listen to them lie, and to listen to many people call them "Dear Daddy"(In the political propaganda),because they are deceived and not victimized for the moment. and watch Authority revise history(or the unending codex)......Saying that without them there would be no you,so you have to be unconditionally loyal to them......
This is why I hate EW.

Yes, I certainly agree with that. BTW, if you're still reading here, an answer to the below would be appreciated:

I'd very much like to know where on 2ch/futaba they discuss FFXIV, as I just can't find it on any of the game-related boards... in addition, there is the textboard, 5chan, which has an FFXIV-dedicated board. They can be remarkably blunt on there. Other than that, it seems scattered, with some on twitter, some on discord, and so on.

[Sevan]

oh..... My English is not good, I didn't mean that they were " shifting to a mentality of bleeding the star dry."Ascians teach the skill of summoning prime, only to serve their purpose. Similar to how we invented the automobile, but that doesn't mean we want to destroy the planet.
I think the shift in their thinking is, "from selflessness to selfishness", or rather, from God to man.
After Zodiark re-vitalised the star, it is clear that the vast majority of people have lost loved ones. Here their values change.
From planets over life, they become life over planets. Similar to how humans will fish and hunt to take care of their families.
In order to save so much life, it is likely that the natural ecology will be severely damaged. This was not their intention, just as humans did not intentionally cause global warming either.
In the final days, "some distraught, grief-struck ancient", they were like humans. Grief-struck and desperate to regain what was lost.
The old version of Hydaelyn, probably worried about environmental destruction, decided to limit Zodiak's powers.
But this script has been abandoned. the post-Elpis cutscene ...... It seems to have become that because the Ancients were so human-like, they should have been genocided.
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]Yes, I certainly agree with that. BTW, if you're still reading here, an answer to the below would be appreciated:

I'm not very good at using this forum ..... About the Japanese, I just know they often post in the anonymous forum 2ch, don't know much more than that.