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

[CrownySuccubus]

There is such a thing as "too much".

Obviously I love hildibrand's quests but I agree with comments that XIV's writing got worse when they started leaking hildibrand style comedy into the MSQ so often.

Endwalker often downplayed it's doom atmosphere drastically willy nilly too. Every story has its breathers but they handled it extremely poorly paced here, with and without the humor.

I don't even disagree with the argument that the comedy in Endwalker was mostly a "miss" for me. But, to be honest, the VAST majority of comedy in FFXIV is a miss for me. I can easily point to the 4.0 WAR quests as an example where I just did not care and never even cracked a smile.

But the "slice of life" arguments are hyperbolic, from where I sit. For the most part, these were not segments where we help Krile ask out the cute boy in English class or help Estinien try out for the basketball team. Even The-Scene-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named and the dreaded Estinien night scene are either commentary on the events of the story, or (particularly in the latter case) the characters trying to psych themselves (and the WOL) for whatever dangers are about to come. Do I think these scenes were 100% necessary and added integral depth and intrigue into the plot? No. But where I stand, they also aren't "abject proof that SE has lost its way", either.

[Raoabolic]

XIV's writing was doomed from the beginning since ARR was being handled by people who have complete disdain by the foundations after all.

To be fair, the story went sideways after the new writer took over during Stormblood. By the way, don't compare Xenogears with Mass Effect, that's just rude, lol.

[Theodric]

O horror! O harrow!
O tyranny! O, humour in a game!

... The irony of such statements. Often coming from those who end up acting exceedingly childish themselves. Who do you think it is that writes this "childish" comedy?

Adults. Adults who wants to create. Adults who want to bring joy to others. Adults working to enjoy the world to the fullest and not restrict themselves with childish attitudes towards anything not deemed "mature".

You seem to be leaping to some rather bizarre conclusions! I don't have an issue with 'funny' scenes being present. I have an issue with the lack of variety. The very same people insisting that people should 'get over it' and just accept every other side quest revolving around comedy are often the same people screeching about how even the slightest bit of grit or consequence in the story is 'too far'. If you read through this thread a common suggestion is for variety and a healthy balance to be embraced. Not...whatever the game has spiralled into becoming.

Let's not forget that this is all happening after the game decided to artificially cut short some of the main storylines that many of us were following and enjoying. We know the reasons for cutting them short were something of a lie too - because the 'new stories' are just tugging at existing plot threads such as the Void and Sil'dih.

Furthermore, this is a game with players from all over the world. Variety is required to appease different tastes, not just without block of players happen to be the loudest and most active on social media.

[Lauront]

O horror! O harrow!
O tyranny! O, humour in a game!

... The irony of such statements. Often coming from those who end up acting exceedingly childish themselves. Who do you think it is that writes this "childish" comedy?

Adults. Adults who wants to create. Adults who want to bring joy to others. Adults working to enjoy the world to the fullest and not restrict themselves with childish attitudes towards anything not deemed "mature".

Thanks for the TED talk, very informative.

[Rulakir]

I'm beginning to think this is a dev issue rather than a player issue. Like covid, Soken's cancer, and whatever else we may not know about just wrecked the team so much they can't handle working on anything but fluff now. I'm flashing back to Yoshi-P's comments about how they have to be into what they're doing and I guess what they're into right now is abject silliness. This doesn't bode well for the rest of EW if they considered 6.0 to be so heavy* that the rest of the patches are just going to be nonsense.

* It really wasn't, not with lack of consequences and the gratuitous amount of jarring, immersion breaking 'comic relief' scenes.

Speaking of which, FF14's general brand of humor doesn't work for me either. I just want a good story and it's looking like ShB was the end of that. I'm an adult, if I feel the game themes are too much or that all I want to do is laugh I'll log off and watch a stand-up comic. I don't play FF14 for comedy and trying to force me to 'have fun' with very subjective forms of humor isn't what I'm looking from my gaming experience. FF14 already wasn't as serious or dark as the other numbered titles, but now it's straight up starting to feel like the kiddie pool version of FF titles.

[CrownySuccubus]

now it's straight up starting to feel like the kiddie pool version of FF titles.

Can't really agree with this, either. FFXIV's humor doesn't land with me, true, but I hardly found that uncharacteristic for the series. Final Fantasy humor has rarely ever been high-brow or sophisticated. FFVII did a whole comedy routine based on Cloud bathing with a bunch of oiled-up muscleheads and being picked by the resident r--ist as his toy for the night. FFIX has a segment where you play Red-Light-Green-Light as a frog.

To be frank, the one FF game where the humor was mostly on-the-mark for me was FFXV. (A large chunk of that was Ardyn, but there were funny interactions between the main heroes as well.)

I guess FFXIV's "crime" here, as it were, is that everything is so padded and stretched out that when a joke "Doesn't Land", you have to watch the plane crashing in slllllloooooooooowww motion. Whereas most prior examples in the series just ripped the bandaid off quick.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

Having more light-hearted scenes is generally alright and not a problem, but FFXIV lately struggles heavily with the fact that you have to be very, very careful where in the story you decide to utilize them.

Having fast food while you are fully aware that in other parts of the world people are getting their souls shredded due to the apocalypse is just bad placement for that kind of scene - it would belong to the very start or the very end when there is no other, highly time-sensitive issue that needs to be addressed.

The loporrits did not feel like a natural continuation of the moon, they just were sudden, unfitting comic relief after we were exposed to some important information and fought a very important fight - and once again, we know that the Final Days are going to start all over, and having a bunch of furry creatures beat the dead horse that was the constant jokes about Rabbits! Carrots! was just jarring. But the loporrits are a whole other can of worms in itself.

And we will not talk about Y'shtola's magical girl thing and her happily sending her familiars into the great unknown.

If you are not careful with where and how you place these scenes and comedy beats, then you end up with a jumbled mess that can be stressful to digest at best and jarring and outright annoying at the worst.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Can't really agree with this, either. FFXIV's humor doesn't land with me, true, but I hardly found that uncharacteristic for the series. Final Fantasy humor has rarely ever been high-brow or sophisticated. FFVII did a whole comedy routine based on Cloud bathing with a bunch of oiled-up muscleheads and being picked by the resident r--ist as his toy for the night. FFIX has a segment where you play Red-Light-Green-Light as a frog.

To be frank, the one FF game where the humor was mostly on-the-mark for me was FFXV. (A large chunk of that was Ardyn, but there were funny interactions between the main heroes as well.)

I guess FFXIV's "crime" here, as it were, is that everything is so padded and stretched out that when a joke "Doesn't Land", you have to watch the plane crashing in slllllloooooooooowww motion. Whereas most prior examples in the series just ripped the bandaid off quick.

Those other games typically have actual consequences for either the world or the main cast though, so those light hearted moments are somewhat warranted. Whereas literally nothing happens to the main cast and it hasn’t happened in so long. We have the entire moon arc basically taken up by slice of life rabbits wanting us to play dress up. This is then mimicked at the 2nd labyrinthos visit where we spend a huge chunk of time playing tour guide for a bunch of rabbits.

[Rosenstrauch]

I guess FFXIV's "crime" here, as it were, is that everything is so padded and stretched out that when a joke "Doesn't Land", you have to watch the plane crashing in slllllloooooooooowww motion. Whereas most prior examples in the series just ripped the bandaid off quick.

This is it for me, at least.

EX: The entire moon section could be roughly summarized as "Twenty minutes of trying and failing to protect the world's greatest hero from an omnicidal clown, then upwards of an hour of getting Found In The Alps by comic relief rabbits".

[CrownySuccubus]

Those other games typically have actual consequences for either the world or the main cast though, so those light hearted moments are somewhat warranted. Whereas literally nothing happens to the main cast and it hasn’t happened in so long. We have the entire moon arc basically taken up by slice of life rabbits wanting us to play dress up. This is then mimicked at the 2nd labyrinthos visit where we spend a huge chunk of time playing tour guide for a bunch of rabbits.

As I've said elsewhere, Endwalker is the "Final Disc" of the FFXIV story. It's the "Hero's Return" portion of the tale where said heroes apply what they've learned into overcoming whatever the final adversary of the plot is. Sure, more dire stakes would have been cool, but it didn't make or break the arc. However, with that said, the reason the problem is so pronounced is because of the constant fake-outs. If you're not going to kill anyone in the main cast, then fine.....but stop trying to pretend that you might.

Having fast food while you are fully aware that in other parts of the world people are getting their souls shredded due to the apocalypse is just bad placement for that kind of scene - it would belong to the very start or the very end when there is no other, highly time-sensitive issue that needs to be addressed.

But that hadn't even happened yet, by that point in the story.