*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[KageTokage]

The fact that several people are having difficulty suspending their disbelief for elements of a story that up until now has not really had that issue seems like more of a problem with the writers then the readers honestly.

You can justify almost any story as not having issues if you blame the reader's lack of willing suspension of disbelief as the problem. There is obviously a layer of subjectivity to things as I've seen people complain about other aspects of XIV's story I dismissed as being rather petty and easily handwaved, but when you have enough people taking something the "wrong way" that Yoshi himself felt like he had to try to refute them, it indicates that maybe they could've handled things a bit better.

[KariTheFox]

You don't even need to accept that Venat made the best possible decision to suspend disbelief, just that Venat believed her decision to be the best possible one.

And given her beliefs, biases and knowledge about the future, it seems pretty believable to me.

[Lyth]

There's always going to be a few people who don't like the work that you put out. And some people are just miserable and just want to drag you down. That comes with any kind of success. The absolute biggest mistake that you can do is to validate such individuals. You'll just end up alienating the people who do love and support your work.

[KizuyaKatogami]

You don't even need to accept that Venat made the best possible decision to suspend disbelief, just that Venat believed her decision to be the best possible one.

And given her beliefs, biases and knowledge about the future, it seems pretty believable to me.

The problem is we are forced to accept it. We are forced to praise her and treat her as a hero. And the person and deity who is the actual hero isn’t mentioned whatsoever. It’s this bias that everyone is upset about.

[Rulakir]

You don't even need to accept that Venat made the best possible decision to suspend disbelief, just that Venat believed her decision to be the best possible one.

And given her beliefs, biases and knowledge about the future, it seems pretty believable to me.

I feel the opposite. Had someone come to me and said that my actions had resulted in the genocide of my race, the annihilation of multiple worlds, and 12k years into the future not only had the Final Days returned but we had no idea how to stop them my first thought would be I should make different choices with this knowledge not I should ensure this future comes to pass.

[KageTokage]

There's always going to be a few people who don't like the work that you put out. And some people are just miserable and just want to drag you down. That comes with any kind of success. The absolute biggest mistake that you can do is to validate such individuals. You'll just end up alienating the people who do love and support your work.

I get that the majority of the playerbase has no issues with the story and whether or not it's because they simply didn't "think too much about it" like Yoshi suggested or genuinely agreed with the messages it was trying to send is mostly irrelevant to the creators in the grand scheme of things.

I also get that it's literally impossible to please everyone and there's always going to be some people who aren't happy.

But I don't agree with the notion that the latter camp should not be considered or "validated" as you put it, particularly when there's a much more visible outcry about how story elements were handled this go-around.

Becoming complacent and refusing to acknowledge or address growing negativity is precisely how things fester and worsen over time. They obviously can't go back and rewrite the story, nor do I think any manner of future lore is going to fix the grievances people have with Endwalker, but they can at least try to avoid making the same mistakes going into the future. It's an undeniable flaw if people are coming away from a story with impressions and opinions that are completely opposite or contrary to what the director and/or writers had been intending after reading into things more.

But I think I'll just leave it at that because this topic has again shifted into becoming a secondary "Why people didn't like Endwalker" discussion.

[Lurina]

There's always going to be a few people who don't like the work that you put out. And some people are just miserable and just want to drag you down. That comes with any kind of success. The absolute biggest mistake that you can do is to validate such individuals. You'll just end up alienating the people who do love and support your work.

I remember these arguments being used in defense of the WoW and GoT writers, and we all know how that ended.

Like, it's baffling to me that someone can even make a statement like this unironically. Obviously writers shouldn't uncritically capitulate to any negative feedback, and should also consider positive responses to their work. But I can't think of an example where refusing to engage with it at all hasn't ended in a complete mess. Like, if we take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, there's no such thing as bad media at all; only creators and haters determined to tear them down. Anyone can see that isn't true, and that writers who become convinced of their infallibility start putting out markedly more messy, self-aggrandizing stuff.

Though if anything, the FFXIV writing team has the opposite problem - Yoshi-P has literally gone on the record in saying that the goal of the story is to make as much of the player base happy as possible, and you can the results of that, for good or ill, all over the place. Beloved characters and plot beats get constant spotlighting and expansion, while controversial ones - like Lyse - drop off the map.

[Lyth]

That's not even a logical generalization!

There are a few extremely vocal player accounts (which may or may not belong to unique players) that are at the center of the majority of this 'feedback', or perhaps more accurately, 'faction shipping'. If that's obvious to the average forum user with the basic forum tools that all of us have access to (including the numerical post breakdowns of threads by account - most people here don't even have 500 posts in total, let alone 500 posts in a single thread), it would be even more blatantly obvious to SE on a forum that they actually have moderator privileges on.

And the fact that you're here on an active account six months later, still demanding AU retcons, indicates that the story has clearly left an impact on you. Which is good in its own way. It's okay to be upset that things didn't turn out the way that you wanted them to. That usually comes with taking sides in a shipping war.

Of course, hats off to you for your diligence, but shippers are usually a determined sort anyways. Everyone has their own way of supporting the game, I guess.

Either way, if Amaurot is indeed as controversial as you claim, then perhaps it's for the best that it's being dropped from the story as well. All this faction shipping gets in the way of the more interesting worldbuilding elements.

[KageTokage]

If you've degraded into thinking this is about "faction shipping" and that people are seriously posting on alts here just to further their arguments, that's reason enough for me (And a lot of other people) to stop trying to engage with you.

Yes, this discussion started in a topic entertaining the notion of Emet-Selch being in the right, but that hasn't actually been relevant to the subject matter for the past several pages. Nor does people thinking Venat made a poor choice automatically mean that they thought the Ascians were right.

[KariTheFox]

I feel the opposite. Had someone come to me and said that my actions had resulted in the genocide of my race, the annihilation of multiple worlds, and 12k years into the future not only had the Final Days returned but we had no idea how to stop them my first thought would be I should make different choices with this knowledge not I should ensure this future comes to pass.

Okay? You're not Venat, Venat is from a race of nigh omnipotent god-people who believe thier race have the right and responsibility to shape the future of thier world. Like Yoshi-P said, she's "very much an ancient".

What you would do or think hardly matters, since we're talking about whether or not Venat believes she was right.