Quote Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa View Post
It's very clear they do not think the average person playing their game is very intelligent otherwise they would not keep doing this. Between everything else mentioned throughout these 500+ pages, I honestly think it's time for new blood on the writing team. Not to potentially monkey paw, but I'm not confident in the writing team going forward. A combination of being terminally online, too obsessed with fanservice, a lack of will to have actual consequences for anyone or anything the players actually care about, inserting extremely bizarre moral messages, a seeming lack of consistent vision, and an utter lack of respect for the intelligence of their audience.
I wonder if it's a cultural thing? According to the Famitsu polls, the average age of the JP FFXIV player is between 20-40 (if I recall correctly). I would say that's a demographic too old for the Disney-like handling of the story. I think more than the writers it seems to be Yoshi-P who's out of touch, especially based on interviews. It's a rated teen game, so it's strange to me that they don't push the limits of storytelling more. The single player titles are grittier.

I read somewhere that ShB was basically entirely Ishikawa with few modifications, but EW seems to have been meddled with extensively. I'm left to assume that the writers if given creative freedom can do great things, the problem is they don't seem to be given that freedom for whatever reason. It's particularly odd to me since supposedly they've said they like darker stories and I'm thinking, okay, so where are they? Either that or we have very different definitions on what makes a story 'dark'.

As for the Scions, having them deal with emotional/psychological consequences would be refreshing for a change. Fordola in SB uses her pseudo-Echo to experience the WoL's pain, deems it unbearable, but we see no evidence of this outside of PTSD when it comes to strangers offering us drinks. The Scions display even less, always going back to their usual selves regardless of their experiences. I'm no fan of Hermes, but I at least appreciate that he has ongoing struggles with how he feels and his dealings with others which also affects his job performance. Imagine if we got to witness such a thing on the protagonist's side?

I'd like to see Ishikawa or Maehiro get free reign over the story again and see what happens. Either the problem persists and we can definitely attribute it to the writers, or we get better stories and know for sure it was outside influence causing the issues.

I 100% agree with no pandering to social media though, that is a recipe for disaster.