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

[aveyond-dreams]

A story where Hydaelyn was the villain and treated as such would likely not have garnered 667 pages of discussion. Making everything revolve around her like Endwalker tried to do didn't work.

[MikkoAkure]

A story where Hydaelyn was the villain and treated as such would likely not have garnered 667 pages of discussion. Making everything revolve around her like Endwalker tried to do didn't work.

The whole game from the beginning of ARR has revolved around Hydaelyn. The game's main theme song is her voice and point of view.

What is your objective measure for "didn't work" or is it "me and my friends don't like it and that's the only opinion that matters"?

[aveyond-dreams]

I'm not engaging in an argument over how I phrase things. I cannot recommend anyone in my age group of 20somethings a story that propped up Venat at the cost of everyone else and the other worldbuilding that was interesting in this game. A story where the main cast suffered very little in the way of consequences all because they were Hydaelyn's "chosen" made for an experience that was too average and nowhere near the level of maturity in terms of the storytelling I expected based off previous expansions.

[Rulakir]

They did a shoddy job of writing Hydaelyn as a heroine. Even her staunchest supporters agree that if the sundering wasn't necessary then it's morally unjustifiable and the narrative no longer works. The problem is they left the door wide open to doubt that the sundering was necessary. Not only that, even if it were 100% guaranteed that the Ancients would eventually 'be their own undoing' that still in no way makes genocide an acceptable response. "I'll destroy you before you can destroy yourselves" is absolutely stupid.

Just because Hydaelyn "helps" the WoL doesn't make her not an antagonist either, especially considering she'd put all her eggs in the WoL's basket so it's in her own self interest to assure that her 'chosen champion' survives to carry out her will. However, objectively speaking from a world history POV, she is without question one of the two primary antagonists second only to Hermes.

[jameseoakes]

They did a shoddy job of writing Hydaelyn as a heroine. Even her staunchest supporters agree that if the sundering wasn't necessary then it's morally unjustifiable and the narrative no longer works. The problem is they left the door wide open to doubt that the sundering was necessary. Not only that, even if it were 100% guaranteed that the Ancients would eventually 'be their own undoing' that still in no way makes genocide an acceptable response. "I'll destroy you before you can destroy yourselves" is absolutely stupid.

Just because Hydaelyn "helps" the WoL doesn't make her not an antagonist either, especially considering she'd put all her eggs in the WoL's basket so it's in her own self interest to assure that her 'chosen champion' survives to carry out her will. However, objectively speaking from a world history POV, she is without question one of the two primary antagonists second only to Hermes.

I think a lot of the issue was making Hydaelyn just be Venat, Hydaelyn isn't really a thing it's just Venat gorged on sacrifices and they didn't really explain why Venat took so little action after she was made especially given just how awful the world she made really is it really doesn't match with how much the game hammered into us she loves everyone but then just watches for 12000 years of horror unfolds and then the actions with Minfillia feels really odd as there seems to be no reason she should need a herald she's the most powerful being in the world...

[Magikazam]

I'm just at the start of Endwalker and I already have an issue with it tbh, the first few quest where you investigate Sharlayan they try to do a classical ''you investigate and learn about the zone'' scenario they spam since Stormblood now... except this time it doesn't work cause you got 5 scions who are more than familiar with the place and could explain everything to you in like 10 min. So when the red-clothed Alphinaud acts smart cause she realized that maybe the publicly known gigantic subterranean living library, perfectly made to hide things, may be where we should look at, It kinda came out as bad writing.

[Rufalus]

I'm back for the patch... Really the way everything is centered on big scripted story events (more like a single-player game) makes it probably the most interesting MMO on patch week, but the weakest one down the stretch when there's no more story to do and everything about the world is static and dead. I think trying to adapt a typical single-player FF story into a never-ending MMO ends up hurting the story. Usually when the heroes save the world / worlds / universe, that is the end of their story. Here it just keeps looping back around to being an errand boy/girl for a while, then building back up to saving the universe from the new monster of the week.

The writers have a lot of restrictions in this format like knowing that the player character has to be immortal and unbeatable in an MMO because they're never going to kill you and force you to create a new one, or cripple you and leave you wheelchair bound, anything that would have a detrimental affect on gameplay. And they can't have a disaster destroy most of Ul'dah because we need that, players use that. They can't write in anything that would change the world, apart from hearing about major events at locations we can't access in gameplay yet. Once we get there ourselves it's a permanent time bubble, any threats by the big bad to wipe it off the map can't be taken seriously, we already know nothing can ever happen.

[Lauront]

I'm not engaging in an argument over how I phrase things. I cannot recommend anyone in my age group of 20somethings a story that propped up Venat at the cost of everyone else and the other worldbuilding that was interesting in this game. A story where the main cast suffered very little in the way of consequences all because they were Hydaelyn's "chosen" made for an experience that was too average and nowhere near the level of maturity in terms of the storytelling I expected based off previous expansions.

You mean, one of these.

[Magikazam]

I'm back for the patch... Really the way everything is centered on big scripted story events (more like a single-player game) makes it probably the most interesting MMO on patch week, but the weakest one down the stretch when there's no more story to do and everything about the world is static and dead. I think trying to adapt a typical single-player FF story into a never-ending MMO ends up hurting the story. Usually when the heroes save the world / worlds / universe, that is the end of their story. Here it just keeps looping back around to being an errand boy/girl for a while, then building back up to saving the universe from the new monster of the week.

The writers have a lot of restrictions in this format like knowing that the player character has to be immortal and unbeatable in an MMO because they're never going to kill you and force you to create a new one, or cripple you and leave you wheelchair bound, anything that would have a detrimental affect on gameplay. And they can't have a disaster destroy most of Ul'dah because we need that, players use that. They can't write in anything that would change the world, apart from hearing about major events at locations we can't access in gameplay yet. Once we get there ourselves it's a permanent time bubble, any threats by the big bad to wipe it off the map can't be taken seriously, we already know nothing can ever happen.

IMO making the most important basis of your gameplay single-player centered in an MMO is an abomination in terms of bad decisions in the first place. It is as relevant as making a singleplayer game, but you get a ingame chat that let you talk to other players in ther single player instance.

Turbo Casual story enjoyers are the kind of people who don't want long-lasting consequences story-wise anyway. The important chars who died so far are either not loved by the community in the first place (Minfillia) or were never plot relevant to begin with (Papalymo) and were legit at a point were people would complain if any other important char died cause they attach to them. Hell in SHB we legit brought back Ysthola from the death for the second time with no consequence. They legit used death fakeout a bunch of time to just give a new class to a npc. When ''death'' is a power-up there a reason why you can't tell a story seriously and hope anyone believes there is any kind of danger of even getting something that ain't the best case scenario out of a dangerous situation.

[Vyrerus]

Endwalker is rehashed the plot from Gurren Lagann, change my mind.

Couldn't ever be. Gurren Lagann had gigantic balls, as it actually killed off Kamina in the first half. Then later in the second half it killed more characters who'd been there since Kamina and Simon had joined the rebellion.