Ardbert's Party vs the Scions Analysis

[Lauront]

As a few others have mentioned, it's all in the presentation. For example, in my opinion I think the glamour system could be improved. I would like to see things like the little check mark that shows up when you already have a minion or orchestrion roll that drops be expanded to include gear that you already have in your glamour dresser, along with increasing the size of the dresser itself as much as possible (when I tidied it up recently, I found some items I had put in there 2 or 3 times).

See how I phrased that? I'm noting it's only my opinion, and mentioning something I would like to see happen.

At a certain point it should be obvious to anyone reading that you're articulating an opinion - what else is it going to be? An opinion can be based on various things, which can alter how factual etc. it is, but it's still implicit in the way the world works that it's just that. If you did not put the "in my opinion" there, it will be filled in for you. Why is the above at all necessary?

Compare that to certain other posters on here, who act as if they're the ultimate arbiters of anything right or wrong, and then demand that the dev team change things to suit them or else they must be horrible writers. That's not productive (or mature for that matter). Case in point posted shortly after your comment: "This story is not constructed as well as more recent single player titles, and if they want to regard FFXIV as one then they need to do better than what we're seeing now with this party." That's trolling at best and uselessly toxic at worst.

Sorry - how is the specific statement above "trolling" or "uselessly toxic"? Where's your" IMO" in the above? Are you trying to dismiss the idea that you can approach a story through the framework of principles of good writing? I am not a writer myself but you seem to be trying to argue that there are no standards or principles to it, which is patently false.

None of us can demand that the writers do anything. We have no power over them other than our subs. This poster put it well:

Responding to a creative work isn't pressure. It's not like I'm demanding that they change the story with some ME3-ending style petition. They can hear my response to it and do whatever they want.

That said, all creator/fan relationships go both ways to some extent, and it's because the scenario team has expressed that they always strive to please people who love the story and not leave anyone feeling burned or left behind in the past that I'm posting to begin with. If this was a Blizzard situation where they obviously didn't give a hoot, I wouldn't.

Some further good posts here:

I remember these arguments being used in defense of the WoW and GoT writers, and we all know how that ended.

Like, it's baffling to me that someone can even make a statement like this unironically. Obviously writers shouldn't uncritically capitulate to any negative feedback, and should also consider positive responses to their work. But I can't think of an example where refusing to engage with it at all hasn't ended in a complete mess. Like, if we take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, there's no such thing as bad media at all; only creators and haters determined to tear them down. Anyone can see that isn't true, and that writers who become convinced of their infallibility start putting out markedly more messy, self-aggrandizing stuff.

Though if anything, the FFXIV writing team has the opposite problem - Yoshi-P has literally gone on the record in saying that the goal of the story is to make as much of the player base happy as possible, and you can the results of that, for good or ill, all over the place. Beloved characters and plot beats get constant spotlighting and expansion, while controversial ones - like Lyse - drop off the map.

Well, implicitly, people are posting and keeping the conversation going here in the hope that the writing team will see it and react in some way - Yoshi-P has talked in multiple interviews about how they try and write a story that won't leave people feeling weird and that they do read feedback, after all. Even if the overall thrust doesn't change, which is fine, it wouldn't be the first time they've expanded on something or shifted the framing for that reason. They discussed how the positive feedback towards Emet influenced his depiction in Endwalker just recently, for example, and he just said the other day that there are going to be several articles by the team discussing people's interpretations of the story, which I don't think has ever happened before in such explicit terms.

While I think it's normally be a bit tacky to expect a writer or team of writers to shift direction based on ones opinion, this is an MMO, which cultivates a constant financial and emotional investment in a way many other mediums don't. So I don't think it's wrong for people to put their feelings of dissonance with the narrative out there.

Of course, it's also possible something is already planned that will solve a lot of these issues and has been since the start, and we'll all look like a bunch of over-reacting dorks in a few months. But that's just how it goes.

Quite frankly, you constantly spitting out terms like "toxic" or "troll" in response to a broad variety of feedback is something I'd consider far more in the region of toxic/trollish behaviour. For instance:

Honestly, just go to YT instead of the toxic cesspool that is the forums. Instead of the same dozen or so people here who will complain about anything, you'll find hundreds of people absolutely loving the game, the story, the music, et al.. FFXIV is an awesome game, and the overwhelming majority of its players know that. They just don't post here on these forums.

You forgot to stick an "in my opinion" in there by the way.