A game for 4 year olds

[Cleretic]

Your rewrite does not have my seal of approval, though there are parts I will commend you for.

I assure you, not having your seal of approval is the greatest sign I could've gotten that my thoughts on how to improve the game have merit.

[rainichan]

I'm not sure if he called someone 'less than human' (didn't see it if he did), if he did I think that's a little much, but I'm not going to judge him for that when there's been far worse in this thread from other posters.

Here's his post that you missed that you're defending without actually knowing what was said. It's on page 24, post #238:

I’ve told people in real life about how EW tried to pull off its messaging. They were not appreciative of it. I do not believe that the people who defend its messaging have experienced loss in their lives or if they have they definitely didn’t process it like a normal human being.

My own strongly worded post was deleted by a mod completely so I won't repeat it, but know that my incredibly fresh, barely-over-a-year experience of losing my father to cancer the day before my wedding anniversary self was ready to say a lot worse than what I said here prior to Aveyond. I don't give a rat's tail what you do or don't think about the story, you can like whatever the heck you want. I don't have to agree with you, but at the very least I'm not going to say that someone didn't process grief like a normal human being because I like Endwalker's story, themes, and how cathartic it was for me to cry it out after my loss. You don't have to agree with that. We probably won't. I'll respect your opinion if you think I'm at least a normal human being, but if not you've lost any shred of respect I may have tried to hold out for those that I don't see eye to eye with, or at the very least won't degrade, put me down, or belittle me for liking something you don't.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

I derive no satisfaction from a story where characters die only to come back to life and preach to me about their forge ahead nonsense while unjustly maligned groups are brutalized in spectacular fashion. I should think that this is readily understandable, as it is to those I speak to outside the world of this game’s community, whose defenders somehow claim this story gripped them so strongly, for reasons that have no logical basis.

It's the ditching of one expansion then cramming the last ten years of what Yoshi personally liked that brought us here. Other than subtly saying that the players of FFXIV who love the game are the worst human beings on the planet and deserve nothing but pain and suffering for enjoying something at all, I don't see how he thought most of this was okay. It's like he played all the most well received RPGs of the last decade and picked the moments players like most but completely failed to grasp the buildup to them. Meteion should have been in the story from the beginning and be introduced as early as, I'd say, the end of ARR but we would learn more about her, Hydaelyn, and the dark crystal that I'm pretty sure was supposed to be Zodiark over the expansions.

I hate talking about it because it makes me sad. The game was full of ways the story couldn't be screwed as hard as it did, but Yoshi was like "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that" to all of it. Squadron, jank as it is, would have solved the immortal Scions issue because you could run all content with your fully customizable party. Hell, give it the trust system. Of course there would need to be drawbacks to encourage playing with other players, such as less EXP or less items.

There's more to post, such as updated Hall of the Novice that would teach large pulls, but I don't have the energy or passion to do so. Like I said, it makes me sad they went the easiest possible way out. Now I just do whatever content I feel like doing, such as crafting the entire Riniscita series without using macros (it's faster and slightly more engaging). Don't care much for variant dungeon despite being a flame chad because best queen's story for me ended when she told Varis to shove it. Too much sympathy and too little certainty, that's how I would describe Endwalker at 1 in the morning when my shift starts at 6 am and I have a doctor's appointment after work.

[Thenightvortex]

Yeah I noticed the Russian thing too...and considering how he thinks Garlemald is the greatest thing since sliced bread...all his posts and line of thinking totally makes sense... he probably worships his country's leader's feet and wants Russia to expand just like Garlemald does and basically sees everyone else as "savages", just like Garlemald does. All this makes perfect sense when he has these unusual "standards" of people who enjoy the story and the idea of wanting female characters who are yes-men doormat bootlickers.

I don't want to call him a you-know-what sympathizer but...it all points to that direction and puts him in a very bad light now that the dots are connected. His posts about loss also makes sense to this too, considering he probably thinks most of the posters here are sub-human...

Why are you trying to make Aveyond sound even more based than he is?

[Cleretic]

My own strongly worded post was deleted by a mod completely so I won't repeat it, but know that my incredibly fresh, barely-over-a-year experience of losing my father to cancer the day before my wedding anniversary self was ready to say a lot worse than what I said here prior to Aveyond. I don't give a rat's tail what you do or don't think about the story, you can like whatever the heck you want. I don't have to agree with you, but at the very least I'm not going to say that someone didn't process grief like a normal human being because I like Endwalker's story, themes, and how cathartic it was for me to cry it out after my loss. You don't have to agree with that. We probably won't. I'll respect your opinion if you think I'm at least a normal human being, but if not you've lost any shred of respect I may have tried to hold out for those that I don't see eye to eye with, or at the very least won't degrade, put me down, or belittle me for liking something you don't.

It'ss the worst thing about the approach to moderating that these forums do: they can insult, belittle, dehumanize and hurt everyone they disagree with as loudly as they want, because the only person who's going to have action taken against them is the one that breaks hard enough to swear at them.

[kaynide]

(Suggested reworking of MSQ)

I kept writing something like this as well, but I kept axing it because it was long.

A sort of TL;DR for me would be to rework the main gripes I have that I’d rework entirely is Endwalker. Unfortunately most of my ideas would be quite drastic and lead to a different direction.

1) End the Ascians with Shadowbringers. They are done. There wasn’t a need for further send off aside from needing a villain to drive us towards fighting Zodiark. This could easily just have been a Zenos so mad at losing to us that he’s hell bent on destroying the world. None of that “my dear friend” nonsense. If there are any remaining, leave them as unaccounted for and possibly a returning trouble maker in way later expansions; possibly as overlords on other shards. With Zodiark destroyed, this could open so many potential plot threads: they could just be about ending the world/revenge against us personally. They might try to find other ways to recreate their perfect world (cloning?). They might learn that even if they do bring their friends back, they won’t really be them.instead just primals like Elidabus.

Hell, some could even decide that since they can’t have the old world back…they’ll just live in this one becoming neutral or even cordial with us.

2) Make the entiiiiirrree plot about getting to the moon and defeating Zodiark. Leave the sound for another expansion and for the love of god, don’t make it a “whoops, ascians goofed” Meteion. I’m beating a dead horse with how many times I’ve said: just make it a cosmic world-ending horror Lavos monster. Even better if it’s already on the planet underground (go go Hollow Earth!)

3) Getting to the moon- we have telescopes, let us see that there is an ancient crashed ship, and a structure on the moon. We have to find a way to get there. Maybe get info from Azys Lla. Maybe leading to Elpis.

4)No time travel; rework Elpis to be told in flashbacks and make the area ruined/overgrown a la Laputa (anime). Automaton groundskeepers and all. The entire point would be to find a semi-functional ship that needs my boy Cid and tech from our various allies. Mammets from Sharlayan, rare metal from Ul’dah etc. not a “oh yeah lol, we have a ship already just need gas!”.

Could even need help from the Garleans via ceureleum fuel + engine.

5) No need to fight Hydaelyn, at all. Have her help in the fight to destroy Zodiark and just let her die with him.

6) No dynamis, no power of feelings, no “oh yeah primals that don’t enslave you teehee”. End of Days need not be despair monsters, but actual awakening hellspawn or some such.

6) Island sanctuary is about actually building a settlement for refugees, not some weird mammet industrial factory thing…

7) No Ultima Thule. Final zone is the moons interior. Where Zodiark awaits.

…it goes on and on…and it would be a very different story… and it’s already too long so I’ll cut myself off here


And I get a lotta people wouldn’t really jive with me, and that’s fine!

That is probably a success point for Endwalker- it has a lot of people talking about it for better or worse.

[Kozh]

He seems to like this name, since his one female alt is named that way. A blondish elezen. Hmm is that some kind of self insert?

It's normal for people to have OC/name that they're attached to. I have one that I made during middle school because I misheard a planet/star name, and fun fact, I still use it for my ffxiv username and one of my alts (used to). Not everything has to be self-insert. Don't be weird.

Aveyond's story even required making up someone random that came from nowhere with no prior build-up or mention at all in earlier content, with no support from existing factions inside Garlemald, and inventing new and contradicting rules of succession for them to take the Garlean throne. She is chosen by Gaius (who by the way is believed by the entire Garlean populace as Varis' murderer in the lore of the actual game) as "oh, she'll do" and just happens to come with baggage including being pregnant with the baby from a rebel leader and ex-lord of a province who just fought and beat back the Garleans to regain his country and is suddenly is A-OK with Garlean hegemony when he learns his baby momma is supported by the Scions for the Garlean throne.

Okay first of all, that's kind of unfair. It's a rewrite but we're not allowed to create new character or add something to the lore? You might as well kill a big portion of fanfics on ao3. And speaking of that, I remember that EW does introduce us to a major new character with no prior build-up or mention at all, which is Meteion. And no, the morse code on CT isn't meteion.

Second, I admit that I haven't read Aveyond's rewrite in detail, but what you write here? It's way more interesting than what we got in ffxiv. Currently, the garlean is basically "some of them went to moon, some seek sanctuary in sharlayan, and the rest are just existing. Oh and most of their people died". Sure there's a chance that the devs might revisit garlemald again in the future, but I'm sure some people here agree that the chance is, and supposed to be, very small. Name issue aside, imo this summary of rewrite is pretty solid and a good plot hook. It kinda reminds me of FFXV Aldercapt (the empire guy)'s granddaughter story, and a little bit of lyse in it too. For a broken nation (or group) sometimes a symbol can give them strength, and this dutchess can become that symbol, that Garlemald isn't finished yet. With her relation with non-Garlean she might even become the reason as to why Garlemald will turn over new leaf in the future.

Of course there is still the issue of women not allowed to be leader, but this is written by the devs, I'm sure they can twist things so that it's okay for her to take the throne. And if it truly rub people the wrong way, we can flip their gender, not hard to do and won't even change the story that much.

I can't comment further as I haven't read the rewrite completely, but as I said previously, it got potential to create intriguing political drama. And dare I say it can also be a romantic drama too (two people from two warring nations? Having to choose between their people or their love? The struggle of convincing their people to stop the fighting? Sign me up!).

Now to a more sensitive topic, I'm guessing people have problem with some states depicted as being better under the Empire rule? As seen with Bozja, it's not too farfetched I'd say. We know that not all garleans are evil, as seen with Maxima and the Populares. Gaius is pretty respectable guy too, a shame that ARR can't exactly explore his chivalrous side. To make the Empire all evil is boring to me. And in real life, we do have people who think their nation was better when they're still under other nation's rule.


Honestly even if this was written by you or other lore people, I would still be very interested in it.

[Carin-Eri]

This back-and-forth discussion (argument?) with Aveyond is completely counterproductive. I mean, if you condense it, it comes down to this:

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'No, you are bad for trying to make us feel bad for liking Endwalker'

Honestly - the whole thing has become a bit of a circlesword (all edge, no point).

[Kozh]

This back-and-forth discussion (argument?) with Aveyond is completely counterproductive. I mean, if you condense it, it comes down to this:

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'No, you are bad for trying to make us feel bad for liking Endwalker'

Honestly - the whole thing has become a bit of a circlesword (all edge, no point).

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'Endwalker is good and you should feel bad for not liking it'

There, fix it for you.

[Carin-Eri]

Aveyond: 'Endwalker is bad and you should feel bad for liking it'
Almost everyone else: 'Endwalker is good and you should feel bad for not liking it'

There, fix it for you.

Okay - I'll concede that you may have some point there, the only real point within that being that Aveyond poured fuel on the proverbial fire with his implication that people who embraced the 'message' Endwalker was trying to put across are not normal.