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

[Theodric]

Which one is your post right here doing, I wonder?

See, that's the problem with this "gatekeeping" argument. Bringing up a topic of discussion does not mean that people can't have an opinion ON an opinion. If someone in here right now came in this thread, and said, "I didn't like Endwalker because it didn't have Captain America in it", they would rightly be called out for it. Having a rant thread isn't a declaration that every single rant is equally valid or reasonable.

I just happen to find this constant vitriol about burgers to fall into the "unreasonable" area, and will continue to say as much unless something changes my mind.

I don't engage in 'gatekeeping'. I've pretty firmly and frequently during my decade long stint on this forum suggested 'agreeing to disagree'.

I also wouldn't consider anything posted in response to G'raha to be 'vitriol'. I'd be more inclined to describe outright personal attacks or bizarre conspiracy theories about posters here being alts of one another as such. He's a bunch of pixels on a screen at the end of the day, hardly a real person with actual thoughts and feelings. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier post, just because one person doesn't see it as a worthy issue to discuss that doesn't mean it isn't valid for someone else. Hence we circle back to the age old 'agree to disagree' approach.

It may also be worth noting that for some of us, G'raha was very much a non entity up until ShB. He was locked away in an optional side quest and then abruptly tied to pretty much every major event in the game's story. Personally if he was front and centre back in the days of ARR and scoffing down burgers I likely would not have bothered investing in the game in the first place.

More than a handful of posters have stated that they feel that the game's target audience and atmosphere has changed after a certain point. By all means, you're free to believe otherwise - though for those of us who see it as a valid point of concern? Well, we're going to continue bringing it up.

[anhaato]

"Goal"? I need a goal to state an opinion now?

How about you? What's your goal here?

I believe I made it quite clear from the beginning that my goal is to get you all to stop derailing threads by starting fights with people because you don’t like the way they criticize the story or it’s characters. You, in particular, have been repeatedly starting shit trying to shut people down, taking up countless pages with it and it’s beyond annoying.

[Rulakir]

I'm convinced at this point there's a vested interest in seeing this thread crash and burn, especially as efforts to derail it have increased in both intensity and frequency since the Zepla mention. I've had people message me to say they felt 'run off' so, you know, good job. This was supposed to be a bastion of catharsis for those who didn't enjoy the EW MSQ and instead it's turned into dozens of pages of pettiness that's not going to result in any meaningful change in story direction, which is at least what I wanted.

Not that I expect my speaking on it (again) will change anything since it didn't before but, yeah, it's very much not appreciated.

[Skyborne]

I'm convinced at this point there's a vested interest in seeing this thread crash and burn, especially as efforts to derail it have increased in both intensity and frequency since the Zepla mention. I've had people message me to say they felt 'run off' so, you know, good job. This was supposed to be a bastion of catharsis for those who didn't enjoy the EW MSQ and instead it's turned into dozens of pages of pettiness that's not going to result in any meaningful change in story direction, which is at least what I wanted.

Not that I expect my speaking on it (again) will change anything since it didn't before but, yeah, it's very much not appreciated.

The poster in question had a couple decent posts, then quickly descended into thread troll argue-for-arguing-sake mode while being a twitter first-reply-guy to certain posters she has a grudge against, use of the ignore list and not responding is recommended.

As happy as I was about the thread reaching 300 it seems like it's run its course until 6.2 is out (I won't be around as my sub ran out and I'm on borrowed forum time). I'll be watching to see if the 'they still needed time to adjust their writing based off of feedback' is true, if not the MSQ (which seems to just be finished with the Ancient/Garlean stuff) then Pandaemonium. I will consume my pants if they actually ease up on the fanservice (and also undo the Y'shtola Hydaelyn-tempering she seemingly endured in EW, seriously, that was the most egregious thing about the Scions to me).

[anhaato]

It’s almost like an insidious plot to fill as many pages as they can with trolling and infighting in order to make that the entire thread’s image when people read through the recent pages. I’m no conspiracy theorist so I’m mostly joking, but it’s certainly going to look that way upon first impression if things keep going the way they are.

[Xirean]

"What's the point with that quite lackluster current topic in this thread?"

Maybe we should start a new thread complaining about this one.

[Kolsykol]

"Goal"? I need a goal to state an opinion now?

How about you? What's your goal here?

----

In regards to Garlemald, they had five expansions to introduce some nuance to Garlemald other than "well, some of them AREN'T racist monsters", but that's pretty much the direction they went to the very end. I was hoping that the Stormblood expacs leading into Shadowbringers would add more nuance to Varis (and thus, the Empire), but we basically just got "I want to cause rejoinings because something-something one true race". I honestly would've saw trying to cram all that into 6.0 or later as a cop-out.

Tbh the racism thing isn't exactly unique to Garleans, and the Garleans being racist is a bit more understandable too considering their history.
Not saying it's right, but it's more like retribution for wrongs committed against them in the past.
( And it becomes a circular thing, but ultimately they were the first to be victimized. )

The whole '' one true race '' thing makes sense too if you know the context behind it ( which we didn't then ), altho the way he presented it was definitely quite unhinged.
But his overall point was that the Ascians were bad and if we were going to stand a chance against them we had to be '' whole ''.
I definitely think Varis is a bit more nuanced with the full context revealed, I also think it's a bit understandable that he'd be a bit unhinged about it considering he had basically been carrying that knowledge alone and even been the grandson of and puppet of an Ascian himself.
Varis just was in a very very screwed up position and could basically not talk to anyone about it until then and like his entire life and the empire he loved was basically a lie.

I didn't really get the impression that the Garleans were just treated as racist monsters, especially not if you know the lore of the other races and how shitty they can be towards each other too.
From our pov we don't see much of it because we're the WoL and generally hang around good people.

Edit: When it comes to Ala Mhigo too there's the whole mad king thing.
There's some truth to the notion that Garleans offered stability even if it was oppressive, I think Eorzeans are portrayed in a pretty negative way quite frequently in the story too.
We saw that with how people trying to adapt were treated too ( Fordola's parents ).

[SentioftheHoukai]

Which one is your post right here doing, I wonder?

See, that's the problem with this "gatekeeping" argument. Bringing up a topic of discussion does not mean that people can't have an opinion ON an opinion. If someone in here right now came in this thread, and said, "I didn't like Endwalker because it didn't have Captain America in it", they would rightly be called out for it. Having a rant thread isn't a declaration that every single rant is equally valid or reasonable.

I just happen to find this constant vitriol about burgers to fall into the "unreasonable" area, and will continue to say as much unless something changes my mind.

You know, I almost MIGHT believe you if I'd like..... ever seen Theodric engage in anything remotely resembling gatekeeping instead of, you know? Defending poster's right to express their opinion against actual gatekeepers. As it stands, the only one currently engaging in such is you. Attempts at being subtle by shaming others into silence instead of the bog-standard method of shouting "SHUT UP!" isn't as obfuscative as you'd like it to be.

I'm convinced at this point there's a vested interest in seeing this thread crash and burn, especially as efforts to derail it have increased in both intensity and frequency since the Zepla mention. I've had people message me to say they felt 'run off' so, you know, good job. This was supposed to be a bastion of catharsis for those who didn't enjoy the EW MSQ and instead it's turned into dozens of pages of pettiness that's not going to result in any meaningful change in story direction, which is at least what I wanted.

Not that I expect my speaking on it (again) will change anything since it didn't before but, yeah, it's very much not appreciated.

Wouldn't surprise me, no heck I'm quite certain that's the case here. As I've said before, passive-aggressiveness rules the day here and this thread has doubtlessly been persona non grata since its inception. So what's likely going on is subtle pokes and prods until one of us slips and loses our patience against the ones with the cattle prod. Then the thread gets shut down and of course it's our fault and naturally always has been.

Also, Zepla? Did someone mention her or did she bring this thread up on Youtube?

[aveyond-dreams]

Also, Zepla? Did someone mention her or did she bring this thread up on Youtube?

She singled out this thread as an example of trolling on the forums in a livestream she did on twitch. I wonder what she would feel if a fundamental issue she cared about like say Viera hairstyles had a megathread and then along comes another streamer or prominent individual that brands it as an example of trolling too.

Anyway I'm taking a break from arguing in circles and working on a total rewrite concept of the missing Garlemald expansion and a new take on what Endwalker could have been. I don't promise anything as in-depth as the Meracydia expansion concept I did a long while back but hopefully it'll be a more entertaining read than how some of the last few pages of this thread have been.

I can already sense the replies telling me that what I've written is too dark or emotional to be palatable to a playerbase that was enamoured by the slice of life scenes of Endwalker, or too political in the style of Ivalician storytelling with not enough meme sequences. Please look forward to it! With any luck those threads will be called out live on stream as well.

[jameseoakes]

I can already sense the replies telling me that what I've written is too dark or emotional to be palatable to a playerbase that was enamoured by the slice of life scenes of Endwalker, or too political in the style of Ivalician storytelling with not enough meme sequences. Please look forward to it! With any luck those threads will be called out live on stream as well.

While I'm not sure how dark I'd want to the story to actually be I've been really surprised just much the the game seems to have switched to from the story telling we'd seen previously to whatever Endwalker actually is