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

[Rulakir]

I probably wouldn't have been nearly as vocally disappointed in Endwalker if Shadowbringers hadn't surprised me, blown me away, and genuinely touched me in a lot of ways.

This. I adored HW and I still consider it my overall favorite expansion, but ShB (at least 5.0-5.3) just cut to the core of me. I've cried so many tears over Emet, Hythlodaeus, and Elidibus.

Shadowbringers removed this possibility for me because it made me really care about this story and these characters, so when I saw them being mishandled, and being used to say things that both a) didn't fit within the moral framework the game had established prior, and b) didn't fit within my moral framework to an extreme, "shrug and roll my eyes" wasn't possible anymore.

Brinne always expressing it better than I do. :P

And because EW is a direct continuation and resolution to those ShB elements I treasured, I can't even compartmentalize the way they clash.

This too. I've said many times I don't feel EW is the spiritual successor to ShB and, frankly, if I didn't know better I would've assumed that Ishikawa wasn't the MSQ writer. It felt like the story was handed over to someone else to go in a direction that was not being set up throughout ShB.

I can't bring myself to get worked up over things like one-off comedy scenes or stuff like Tweetingway as a marketing device.

I would've had less of an issue with those scenes if it weren't for the fact that the Final Days/Sundering scene we got was just absolute crap. We find out they spent a month getting Hydaelyn's face just right, that the Estinien 'foot on the railing' scene was the most expensive, etc. and then the moment we've all been wondering about is just... that. No Convocation, no Zodiark summoning, no Hydaelyn transformation, no epic battle between the two, none of what people have been wanting to know about and see since ShB. Just an inaccurate depiction of events using old assets meant to glorify Venat.

I feel like us lore nerds got the shaft in this expansion.

My sub is expired as of a few days ago and I don't plan on resubbing for a month or two, I'll reach out to you when I'm back to a regular play schedule.

We're losing another voice in the choir. I wish FFXIV didn't make it such a hassle to contact people. It'd be nice to be able to stay in touch with those from this thread who've unsubbed.