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

[Lauront]

From my point of view, they should have gone one of two ways: applied the dynamis angle more strongly, making the sundering a tragic necessity that is acknowledged as such, rather than some self-righteous, genocidal judgement (and perhaps offer a a potential chance of redemption akin to the destroyed stars), or played the "can't handle negativity" slant straight as I said earlier and have them doom themselves from the outset, rather than some peculiar, weak combination of the two filled with plot holes. The race we are shown do not match the actions they take in the story.

My view on this is they shouldn't've leaned so hard on trying to justify it. They didn't do a good job of it, and they had another approach available to them, which was to allow for the possibility of sabotage and/or the Sundering being an accident. Couple this with how Elidibus being the heart seemed to erode away his persona to some extent, and they could've mirrored this approach in Hydaelyn to produce something like Yunalesca - a well meaning antagonist whose methods were nonetheless flawed or at the least disagreeable to some degree, connecting this to primal powers like tempering and a zeal to fulfil her directive. Although this is down to personal taste at the end of the day, I wouldn't've been much happier if they genuinely tried to make the ancient world a crypto-dystopia, as it'd undermine the sympathy built in SHB for the Ascians and, more broadly, the ancients. There's been one too many games I've played which take this approach, and it just ends up being a case of "woohoo they're gone! they had it coming!" Bizarrely, some take this approach with the ancients anyway, and I can't say it makes a lick of sense to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That isn't to say I never think such a theme would fit, but in this case it'd just undo a lot of what made me like SHB's storytelling.

I didn't necessarily hate Emet and Hythlodaeus in Elpis, but I wonder what we might have gotten without the fanservice lens, especially with Hyth.

My hope is that they stop obsessing so much over this and instead think about what suits the character, as obsessing over what this or that site likes ends up just agglomerating fan headcanons/tastes into a character rather than letting them be their own authentic thing.

[Lunaxia]

snip

It wasn't necessarily what I hoped to happen, per se, but what would have made more sense if taking the direction the writers chose. What I hoped for was a much more critical review of Hydaelyn and the removal of her crystal pedestal, more of Zodiark similarly painted in a less black and white view, more on the original Final Days itself, how they dealt with the mounting crisis and the original summoning of Zodiark, and the possibility that some day, at some point, even if far into the future, that the Ancients might be given a second chance, just as... pretty much every single other previously doomed collective in this game has been given.

As you can imagine, EW was a very satisfying experience for me.