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

[Rulakir]

I don't think the writers wanted Venat to be a monster but then for almost no actual reason have her compleley exterminate her own people

I figured Venat would be the mirror to Emet. Instead, what we got was a character who in every possible way is an antagonist, but never treated as such by anyone including characters who should have seething hatred and contempt for her. She even lacks the sympathetic motivations of Emet, but the game tries to force you to believe she's sacrificed on behalf of her love of mankind.

She's a much closer parallel to the Christian God, except with zero mercy whatsoever. She makes no exemptions for anyone save those who will work tirelessly against her and her 'sparing' them is an eternal condemnation in itself. This also makes it impossible to relate to her because even in the case of God you're told that as a human you cannot comprehend His plan, but in Venat's case she's just a woman regardless of whether or not she claims the mantle of "Supreme Deity". A woman who comes up with illogical reasons why she cannot confide in others, who dooms her people due to her own fears and lack of faith.

I'm not convinced the Venat we got in EW was Ishikawa's intent, especially not after the NieR crossover cutscenes which depict the sundering as a brutal butchering of souls that led to such an extreme devolution of mankind they could no longer form words or use language. I suspect that Yoshi-P and/or someone else told her after the fact that Hydaelyn must be a "good" character and with the reduced timeline the best she could do was keep events as they were, but give Venat a likeable personality and gaslight the Hell out of the audience to the extent of breaking established character development and turning everyone into a hypocrite (or worse). Even this could've easily been explained away if Hydaelyn tempered, in which context EW makes a lot more sense.

[aveyond-dreams]

For future reference, if your time travel story has to rely on memory wipes in the middle of the action in order for it to make sense, it's likely inherently flawed. All it took was 5 minutes of reflection and all the hype masking the flaws in the later portions of the story falls apart. At least I still have my headcanons. With hardly any content to do in game besides pvp and not much personal excitement for the upcoming patch story, it's going to be a long wait until things really start to pick up again for me.

Even then I have limited expectations for 7.0 - if the game wants to pander to people who can't stomach a serious story or level-appropriate gameplay in direct contradiction to things that built its foundation then there's little I can do. I came to this game for a world that was interesting, stayed on for characters that were fleshed out and well developed, and admittedly suffered through some of the earlier gameplay mechanics until things evened out, until that train got derailed entirely with no job being safe from unwanted, detrimental changes.

All while the G'raha fanclub preaches about how emotional and amazing 6.0 allegedly was, while being catered to by not only the main game's forceful advances of him onto the player character but the manga made in honor of that style of storytelling as well. I had already made up a dream concept for a 7.0 set in a Meracydian "Mist Continent" with a mix of old and new cast members to keep things balanced, but instead of grounded storytelling it doesn't seem like we can expect anything other than more convoluted ultra-supernatural plot elements and unkillable cast members. Taking from visual novels from one part and taking from WoW the other, the things that contributed to widespread community disappointment with the story over time until the game self-selected to the point where hardly anyone was left.

As others have mentioned, it is embarrassing that things have turned out this way for a game that at one point was able to satisfy both serious players and the whims of its social media fandoms, yet now is objectively tilted against the former with each patch grating on our patience further and further. This isn't going to be sustainable long term and will eventually lead to the same sort of self-selection problems where just like how WoW struggles to attract new players, FFXIV will struggle to find people outside the twitter fanclubs willing to tolerate lackluster story and gameplay combined.

Also happy national hamburger day I guess. Naturally with EW being more defined by G'raha Tia eating McDonalds than any other scene, that's what the official twitter is promoting today and what that crowd is apparently hyped up for. Players like myself will vanish once games like FFXVI come out, and prior to that depending on how botched 6.2 turns out perhaps my attention will turn over to Soul Hackers 2. Though Stranger of Paradise was tragically short, I can always hop into FFXI and play jobs with a more accurate feel over there than here - especially Summoner with a complete pantheon and a Blue Mage that can progress the main story.

FFXIV's future is more uncertain than ever despite its roadmap and upcoming graphical improvements. You cannot hope to retain players if both pillars of gameplay and it's story - it's alleged strongest selling point - both collapse onto themselves.

[Rulakir]

(*) I still find it hilarious that the Kairos/Ktisis incident was seemingly never investigated by anyone. After all, it only implicated one of the most powerful and politically important people on the planet, and two other guys who weren't exactly nobodies either. No big deal!

I love Emet, but man did EW require him to be out of character. Not only a complete idiot when it comes to Hermes (loss of memory is only part of the problem), but all of the "hatred and heartbreak" instantly gone in Ultima Thule where he proceeds to praise Venat. I suspect because Yoshi-P (he's going to be my default fall guy) requested that the 'fan favorite' forgive her for that extra cherry on top that she's "not a bad guy", especially after finding out the 'bucket list' was his doing.

Even then I have limited expectations for 7.0 - if the game wants to pander to people who can't stomach a serious story or level-appropriate gameplay in direct contradiction to things that built its foundation then there's little I can do.

My dilemma is even if they never address the Ancients again, the protagonists are privileged, invincible, and homogeneous while the antagonists (who are typically the more compelling characters) are doomed to be utterly destroyed because they dare stand for something opposed to the Scions' values.

First, this is completely uninteresting to me. The Scions get their wins handed to them on a silver platter, they never have to undergo a fraction of what anyone else we meet does, several of them share a redundant role (the problem with nearly all of them being Sharlayan scholars), there are no personality conflicts among them, no disagreements, they experience nothing in the way of meaningful setbacks, and after EW I'm concerned about the game preaching to me and telling me what my values are. No, thank you.

I believe I've said before, I have no interest in what Yoshi-P's vision for the WoL is. This personality they've thrust upon my character as a traveler who seeks challenges is new to me, that's not the impression I've had of the WoL until EW, and I'm not fond of the shift. At this point, they've not only severed all story hooks that had me invested in the game, but have made it abundantly clear that there's no point in becoming attached to any character who isn't on the protagonists' side. Additionally, forcing player perspective by not offering diverse dialog options so I have no choice but to love or hate who the devs do and share in their morality since they decided to throw nuance out the window. I can't say this is fun for me.

[Lunaxia]

I figured Venat would be the mirror to Emet. Instead, what we got was a character who in every possible way is an antagonist, but never treated as such by anyone including characters who should have seething hatred and contempt for her. She even lacks the sympathetic motivations of Emet, but the game tries to force you to believe she's sacrificed on behalf of her love of mankind..

Jumping in somewhat late after only finishing Endwalker the other week - I hadn't intended on playing, especially after seeing Hydaelyn ultimately venerated as a hero, but being ill with a lot of time on my hands, I decided to try it. After seeing the constant adulation the game was getting, perhaps I had judged wrongly?

Alas, no. As you say, to my eye she was a deal more antagonistic than even the Ascians. What struck me the most was how they saw their people as their brethren, their equals, whereas Venat sees and speaks of her people as separate from her, as if they're beneath her, and deems herself and herself alone better than all of them and somehow worthy of deciding what is "best" for them.

I don't think there has ever been a more maddening moment in this game than seeing Venat refer to the Ancients as her "love"... you know, the people who she then goes on to ultimately massacre and eradicate every aspect of, from their lives, their culture, their history, to the very fact they ever existed, and elected herself "goddess" and "mother" over their broken and twisted remnants. In the context of any other story, she'd been seen as a terrible villain.

There's also something hideously ironic about an Ancient who refused to return to the star and lived, by her words, a long, happy, adventure-filled life devoid of pain and suffering and full of neverending wonder telling the shards of the people she destroyed about why living a short life filled with unavoidable torment is a good thing, and that being immortal and immune to pain is bad and will supposedly lead us to being so happy we'll be bored and kill ourselves, which for some reason the writers constantly try to impress upon us is somehow much worse than poverty, disease, loss, war, etc. etc. You know, those little things Hydaelyn lovingly bestowed upon the human race she adores so much, that don't matter because we have... friendship, apparently.

[Skyborne]

chadpost

I am reminded of this...

And did you notice? Hydaelyn still has wings.

All well-put and precisely why I have a problem with the way the writing and narrative presents her. Let's not forget, either, that the Ancients weren't even immune to pain, and they had their own problems and struggles. Ironically, she was so idealized even in Elpis (it's like the devs were screaming PLEASE LIKE HER PLEASE LIKE HER at me) that I found the rest of the 'perfect' ancients far more down-to-earth and relateable than her.

Also happy upcoming 500 pages! The damage has been done by Endwalker, but surely, they might take some of this feedback (including from JP) in mind and change course? Haha... right?

[aveyond-dreams]

If anything this thread will likely eventually be shut down under the premise of "decreasing forum load times" like several other megathreads were in the past. Whether or not the writing team will actually be receptive and act on the feedback is another question entirely. If it is their own preference to turn FFXIV into a glorified visual novel then it is likely they will proceed with their plan to have us visit all the fast-food chains in the 13th with only 1-2 battle sequences every now and then because the adjusted target audience cannot stomach gothic/lovecraftian horror (as would be expected of a Void expansion, but they didn't commit to apocalypse themes for the end of the world expansion so what can we expect?), to say nothing of plotlines with any nuance or depth.

[anhaato]

I didn't think my silly little writeup about my personal ideal version of the story would become so popular enough to be discussed for a few pages and then referenced as something that people might enjoy reading if they were unsatisfied with the story :P guess I should've applied for a job at SE.

Horn tooting aside I think something like that just illustrates that the majority of these problems wouldn't exist if the writers had another expansion's worth of room to write, and also didn't have YoshiP breathing down their necks while they did. I also came around to realize that Elidibus really REALLY deserved better. I wish he could've been a travel companion for EW considering we did end up needing his help at one point, that would've made the present cast a lot more interesting. Emet lingering around us in SHB was great, how they didn't realize people enjoyed the dynamic of his conflict with the cast is insane to me.

Edit: first post of the 500th page! Happy 500 everyone, that's 500 pages of pure cope and seethe! Keep up the good work fellas, maybe at some point they'll deign to listen to us.

[Lunaxia]

great points

Forgive my piggybacking off another one of your posts, I just wholeheartedly agree and funnily enough you make another excellent point that had been on my mind. (I can scarcely touch on Emet in Ultima Thule. How they managed to scrub away all the weight and pathos behind his final line in Shadowbringers in one clean sweep with that "I bid them remember, but I was the one who forgot!" line straight from a Cartoon Network episode was almost as impressive as it was horrendous.)

No one points out how ridiculously privileged the Scions are - and I don't even mean that in the "modern" sense of the word. Their incessant monologuing at the poor and downtrodden on the meaning of life, loss and pain from their own coddled perspective as wealthy, highly-educated scholars hailing from one of the most peaceful and affluent nations on the planet approaches a tone-deafness on par with Venat with the sundered. I've always loved the twins, but I found it increasingly harder especially to tolerate their preaching after witnessing the place they occupied in Sharlayan society with their ludicrously oversized-home, their wunderkind status at the Studium and supposedly having "too" much money that their mother simply had to spend it somewhere. Where is the part of any of this that's vaguely relatable?

I really would have liked to see them trying to do this after having lost some of the Scions, given they are nigh on hysterical after only nearly losing the WoL. I feel like actually coping with the grief they tell others how to deal with would have given a lot more meaning to the message they're trying to convey. Or would that reality hitting so close to home reflect too poorly on Venat, I wonder? Standing there telling her the adventure was worth it with half of them gone would have been a very different experience, I imagine.

[KizuyaKatogami]

WE HIT 500 POSTS EVERYONE CONGRATULATIONSSSS!!!!!

[anhaato]

Who wants to make the new thread when the forum mods inevitably close this one down to “decrease load times” right before YoshiP’s next msq mansplaining (I say this facetiously) live letter?