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

[anhaato]

I can't think of any nicer way to put this, they're appealing to softies, that's about it. The kind of player that reaches for the tissues during their msq reaction twitch stream whenever a slow piano track starts playing during a cutscene. They don't want their faves to die so a fake-out is good enough to get them screaming MOST COMPELLING STORY IN MMO HISTORY! And, naturally, they eat up any slice of life fluff cutscene or uncharacteristically cutesy behavior. Somehow they thought that this sort of consumer is now their largest demographic because they happen to be the loudest with their praise, when really most of the players just want a story that's, like, good. One that makes sense and is tonally consistent.

It also probably doesn't help that Ishikawa seems to personally enjoy it as well. She hyperfocuses on character interactions a lot. Good for side quests, good for fleshing out relationships between the main cast when necessary (and I felt it was very apt in SHB because we weren't a tightly knit group beforehand), but bad for when that's all been said and done and it's time to get to the conflict.

I realize this is condescending of me to say but I'm far too annoyed by it to care. All the prolific content creators who get clicks through their teary-eyed overreactions piss me off so hard these days, but that seems to be the kind of content SE wants to generate. Why else would they keep referencing Haurchefant to the point of every other dialogue option being ASBSAH and them designing an entire ultimate around an AO3 fix-it fic in which he survives?

[LisSquid]

They don't want their faves to die so a fake-out is good enough to get them screaming MOST COMPELLING STORY IN MMO HISTORY! A

I remember mostly everyone coming back from the finale of ARR, so I couldn't be phased at all by seeing characters die afterwards. I don't know how people who just started, with all of it fresh in their mind, found any of that worth the tension.

She hyperfocuses on character interactions a lot. Good for side quests, good for fleshing out relationships between the main cast when necessary (and I felt it was very apt in SHB because we weren't a tightly knit group beforehand), but bad for when that's all been said and done and it's time to get to the conflict.

This was my big issue. I just flat out cannot stand some characters. So when it's written in such a way that the very mood of the arc hinges on me giving a chocobo's ass about so-and-so I am so put off. G'raha isn't charming to me because I would rather he not be so informal to my WoL, my perception makes every interaction feel like he's humping my leg.

Sorry for quoting you so heavily, but I really don't know how else to contextualize my thoughts. ShB had moments that I thought were unique and shocking, but even the grand finale that made ShB this wonderful.. shade of gray situation? Naw, EW is here to make sure you know you were 100% the good guy and everything you did was 100% correct

[Teraq]

Sorry for quoting you so heavily, but I really don't know how else to contextualize my thoughts. ShB had moments that I thought were unique and shocking, but even the grand finale that made ShB this wonderful.. shade of gray situation? Naw, EW is here to make sure you know you were 100% the good guy and everything you did was 100% correct

It's my number 1 complaint about Endwalker, to be honest. Shadowbringers brought some much needed nuance to the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict, with neither side truly right, each simply wanted to handle the post-Final Days situation differently and one side ultimately won, prompting the sole survivors to resort to desperate measures out of responsibility to their people. With the cause of the Final Days unknown, it made for a very compelling and human tragedy.

Endwalker took this and shat on it. The Ancients deserved it, you see, and were a dead end. Hermes was the only relatable and human Ancient with feelings, and he and Meteion were simply products of the society they lived in, bottom text, and their actions ultimately resulted in a net gain for mankind. Hydaelyn is indeed a primal, but this fun little tidbit does not matter in any way at all narratively: she did not temper anyone, did not suffer from Primal Brain Rot like Elidibus did, was not warped by slowly devolving ideals in 12,000 years, and seemingly did not drain the land of any aether – I guess Hydaelyn was just Venat but cooler. The only "greyness" left at all is Venat's self-flagellation, which is promptly dismissed by the Scions and the plot itself wildly gesturing and silently mouthing at you that SHE WAS 100% RIGHT SHE DID THE ONLY THING THAT COULD BE DONE AND SHE IS A HERO FOR IT. This isn't moral greyness, it's having your narrative cake and eating it too.

When you look at this image, it will finally dawn upon you the reason behind many of the writing decisions in Endwalker and who they were trying to appeal to, why things felt, as Anhaato put it, twitch streamer reaction baity. When Yoshi said they had been "watching streamers" since mid 2021, they meant it.

(snip)

Wow, this picture just revived my undying rage for FFXIV social media. Thanks I hate everything about it!

[Lauront]

I can't think of any nicer way to put this, they're appealing to softies, that's about it. The kind of player that reaches for the tissues during their msq reaction twitch stream whenever a slow piano track starts playing during a cutscene. They don't want their faves to die so a fake-out is good enough to get them screaming MOST COMPELLING STORY IN MMO HISTORY! And, naturally, they eat up any slice of life fluff cutscene or uncharacteristically cutesy behavior. Somehow they thought that this sort of consumer is now their largest demographic because they happen to be the loudest with their praise, when really most of the players just want a story that's, like, good. One that makes sense and is tonally consistent.

It also probably doesn't help that Ishikawa seems to personally enjoy it as well. She hyperfocuses on character interactions a lot. Good for side quests, good for fleshing out relationships between the main cast when necessary (and I felt it was very apt in SHB because we weren't a tightly knit group beforehand), but bad for when that's all been said and done and it's time to get to the conflict.

I realize this is condescending of me to say but I'm far too annoyed by it to care. All the prolific content creators who get clicks through their teary-eyed overreactions piss me off so hard these days, but that seems to be the kind of content SE wants to generate. Why else would they keep referencing Haurchefant to the point of every other dialogue option being ASBSAH and them designing an entire ultimate around an AO3 fix-it fic in which he survives?

Couldn't agree more. I guess I'm not the target audience for streamers, and the few times I've tuned into 14 streams, I just ended up hitting X not too long into it. Too overly emotional and little of value in the content for me. I also agree that it is an error to assume that all their playerbase values this slice of life, touchy feely stuff - like others said, it's fine in moderation but now that it is seeping into the MSQ more and more, it's hard to avoid it. Of course you need proper gathering of feedback, that hits on fairly granular/specific feedback about the story, and then to analyse this feedback, and I seriously doubt they do this at the moment. Even so, it's good to see some critical feedback is making it their way. I can't see myself playing 10 more years of this game if 6.1 is an indication of what's to come.