A game for 4 year olds

[CheshCa7]

Let's not "both sides" this. Aveyond went personal in an ugly way. He said that people are either lieing or they did not grief like normal humans because they did not meet his very narrow and, might I say, pretty niche, definition of a grieving human being. That is way worse than anything that people told him till that point. And that is if we put aside the baseless arrogance, the dismissal of others arguments ("I did not read you essay") and his usual behaviour that shows a profound lack of respect for others and really reminds of a petulant child.


And the fact that some of you defended him in this speaks volumes. So next time you try to play the card of "woe is me, such a victim I am, people are mean because I hated EW" remember that you defended much worse behaviour. So yeah, that victim spiel won't work.

[Carin-Eri]

Let's not "both sides" this. Aveyond went personal in an ugly way. He said that people are either lieing or they did not grief like normal humans because they did not meet his very narrow and, might I say, pretty niche, definition of a grieving human being. That is way worse than anything that people told him till that point. And that is if we put aside the baseless arrogance, the dismissal of others arguments ("I did not read you essay") and his usual behaviour that shows a profound lack of respect for others and really reminds of a petulant child.


And the fact that some of you defended him in this speak volumes. So next time you try to play the card of "woe is me, such a victim I am, people are mean because I hated EW" remember that you defended much worse behaviour. So yeah, that victim spiel won't work.

To be clear, I'm not defending him as such. If anything, I think he crossed a line a in a big way with his attitude toward anyone who doesn't agree with his mindset, and I think he's made things worse by trying to pull the 'I'm the victim in this' card too.

I do still maintain that this discussion is, ultimately, pointless though - the thread was clearly created to discuss the story around the Omicron quest chain and managed to derail into yet another discussion about Endwalker as a whole. There are already numerous threads (one with a post count in the 700+ range) to discuss that and, personally, I'm tired of how consistently threads created to discuss X end up as Endwalker/Hydaelyn genocide/how much the writing sucks soapboxes lately.

[CheshCa7]

To be clear, I'm not defending him as such. If anything, I think he crossed a line a in a big way with his attitude toward anyone who doesn't agree with his mindset, and I think he's made things worse by trying to pull the 'I'm the victim in this' card too.

I do still maintain that this discussion is, ultimately, pointless though - the thread was clearly created to discuss the story that the Omicron quest chain and managed to derail into yet another discussion about Endwalker as a whole. There are already numerous threads (one with a post count in the 700+ range) to discuss that and, personally, I'm tired of how consistently threads created to discuss X end up as Endwalker/Hydaelyn genocide/how much the writing sucks soapboxes lately.

Oh, my message was not towards you. And I completely agree that every thread being derailed towards the same complaints is tiring (and I read most if not all posts from that gigantic thread. Gigantic but more than half the pages there are the same old posters with the same old opinion, but I digress). Unfortunately this topic was doomed to go that way I mean, if you look at who the OP is and how inflamatory the first post and even title was formulated, this thread was not going to be a civilised discussion about the Omicron quests. If you go back to the first page you see the usual suspects with the usual complaints ("story is for children", 'Yoshi P is ruining FFXIV', 'who is this story for???!!!11'). So what happened next was only natural.

[Cleretic]

Save actual moderator action on Aveyond (which I think is unlikely for the reason I mentioned), changing the subject to something at least very slightly nicer to talk about...

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

I can't say I like all of your ideas on this (making the entire story 'a grand journey to kick Zodiark in the grill' feels way too expected, it'd be a boringly typical finale), and I'm not really sure what your version of Endwalker would really be trying to say as a story beyond 'sometimes you need to kill an evil wizard's dark god', some of this is genuinely neat and I hadn't thought of it before. I'd long ago ditched the notion of 'what if Elpis was just an Echo flashback' as kinda the most dull way to explore the information it gives us, but instead exploring Elpis as sky ruins with a big Ghibli vibe would actually do a whole lot to fix that, at least to a point where I can't immediately call it a downgrade. Of course it kinda strands Pandaemonium, and we won't know until 5.4 what their actual aim is for it enough to find a fix for that.

I'm not against these rewrites/edit notes as a concept, just as long as we recognize that A: there's a line of detail after which it's just fanfiction, and while fanfiction is fine we should recognize it for what it is, and B: those ideas are quite often worse than what we got in some way or another. Sometimes extremely so. Turns out the people paid to write the game tend to have thought about how to present its ideas and story more than we do, who'd have thought?

I like that Endwalker is imperfect in ways that let me think about it like this (it's WAY harder to 'improve' the other expansions even if I consider some of them worse, as you probably saw from my attempt) and consider ways it could've gone differently, it's a fun exercise that I don't get with a lot of other media I enjoy. But yeah, I'm not about to pretend my ideas are inherently better than theirs; hell, there'd be a decent chance that if I did somehow get the Endwalker with all my desired changes, I'd actually like it less somehow. I mean, if you gave me the story outline without me knowing how it'd go, I'd have probably cut Quintus, and his scenes were some of my favorites in the entire game. And I DEFINITELY wouldn't have thought of the Omicron tribe, even though I love both it and all of its inspirations.

[Thenightvortex]

I'm not against these rewrites/edit notes as a concept, just as long as we recognize that A: there's a line of detail after which it's just fanfiction, and while fanfiction is fine we should recognize it for what it is, and B: those ideas are quite often worse than what we got in some way or another. Sometimes extremely so. Turns out the people paid to write the game tend to have thought about how to present its ideas and story more than we do, who'd have thought?

Meanwhile, the “writers”:

What’s the lifespan of mortal races: Eh…I don’t know

Why are mortal races different when they all came from the same one: Well, like, miqo’te needed to hear really good and lalafells were under a lot of pressure I guess…

How much time has passed since 1.0 to Endwalker: Now that’s a rabbithole I don’t want to go into…Idk, how old is Y’shtola?

How did the Unsundered ascians escape: Well Emet was let go by Hydaelyn and the two others…Happened to be nearby idk?

What about the sundered overlords or black mask ascians: Wow guys you’re really paying close attention. Eh…They’re still out there, somewhere…

I’m drowning in sheer depth of the thought they have given to this story.

[RukoBoshi]

I just wished Endwalker was actually two expansions.
One focused on Garlemald and it's surrounding regions like in HW or SHB, ending with our fight against Zodiark on the moon.
Garlemald deserved more than a single zone and being off screened by Zenos.
Anima should have been a trial too.

I think Zodiark not being the actual final opponent was a good idea, but that plot needed more time to properly get us intrigued and set up that antagonist.

I would put Garlemald and the moon in the same expansion, and developped the moon as something more than the lopporits hideout and an unused ship.
Ideally, it would have an ascians "city" and they would be some of the enemies before fighting Zodiark.
I can imagine some patches showing how these ascians processed the death of their god and ambitions. I think it would have been nice to tie up the fate of the remaining ascians that way.

Then the final expansion would have focused more on Sharlayan, Thavnair and Elpis.
I think both these cities storyline are fine, but suffered from having our group constantly moving from too many different places.
I'm particularly dissapointed that Thavnair is just one zone and city. I would have love to have a reason to explore the island more.

[kaynide]

.

I’m mostly with you, s’why I deleted it a few times- it just turns into fanfic and gets cringy…but still.

I think my ideal point of EW would have been a “we are all in this together, friends and enemies both”, so enemies are forced to work together to save the world…but that might fray quickly post threat..only to turn into cosmic dread. Cheesy as it may be.

I also do like the omicrons very much and the idea of finding a new purpose is appealing. I’d probably have put them on the moon (staging to take over maybe?)..I dunno. With the omicron quest I like Thule and Dead Ends more than I ever did via the actual MSQ.


I guess my ultimate gripe is, everything I was expecting the story to be just wasn’t there. We were handed a spaceship, the daddy drama was entirely unnecessary, Zodiark was just a giant “mecha”…

And maybe there is something to say about things being fresh or unpredictable, but I think there is also something to be said about setting the goal early ( “take ring to Mordor”) and that actually being the final goal, no sudden Scooby Doo reveal.

[Iscah]

Meanwhile, the “writers”:

What’s the lifespan of mortal races: Eh…I don’t know

Why are mortal races different when they all came from the same one: Well, like, miqo’te needed to hear really good and lalafells were under a lot of pressure I guess…

How much time has passed since 1.0 to Endwalker: Now that’s a rabbithole I don’t want to go into…Idk, how old is Y’shtola?

How did the Unsundered ascians escape: Well Emet was let go by Hydaelyn and the two others…Happened to be nearby idk?

What about the sundered overlords or black mask ascians: Wow guys you’re really paying close attention. Eh…They’re still out there, somewhere…

I’m drowning in sheer depth of the thought they have given to this story.

I agree the lack of thought put into the Sundering is evident and they just make it worse every time they seemingly make up answers on the fly, but we do have answers to most of the non-Sundering questions.

They do know, and have stated in the lorebook, how long the races live for – basically human rate, Elezen 10%-20% slower ageing, and Viera with their weird "young for two centuries" thing (though I don't think we know what happens after that, unless Ivalice lore tackles it perhaps).

And we know how time works – or rather, how we're supposed to pretend it doesn't work. We are officially not counting time since the beginning of the game, and it is always "five years since the Calamity" however many years-worth of adventure we fit into it.

Y'shtola has to be somewhere around 32 – she was 17 when she left Matoya's cave and has been involved with Scion business for at least 15 years since (going by 1.0 flashbacks).

And even if they have plans for the remaining Ascians, do you seriously expect they'll tell us about them? Deflecting off a future potential plot point is going to be the response whether they have a detailed plan or nothing at all.

[aveyond-dreams]

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.

Me choosing to not believe someone who has given me no reason to trust their words after all I’ve seen from EW’s defenders is not the same thing as the outright hostility. This is because I am literally not acting hostile towards these people, I am skeptical for reasons I’ve already explained but I shall do so again. I do not feel anything for these people. My expression is a neutral one. I scrutinize and am highly skeptical of everyone I encounter online until I have sufficient evidence to believe their stories. Otherwise I keep a high guard. It would not be the first time an MMORPG player lied about their circumstances.

Perhaps they should have considered that people would not automatically trust their emotionally charged way of trying to win an argument here before deciding to overshare. Again, this isn’t the sort of behavior that I’d expect from mature adults. From my perspective this is not socially appropriate behavior. You may feel free to disagree. I genuinely do not believe that Endwalker has done anyone any favors in terms of helping them process grief, rather it seems it’s given people unrealistic ways of doing so. From the state of the afterlife lore in this game to the stunt the Scions pulled in Ultima Thule with their fakeouts, I found it incredibly disrespectful that they then tried to attach this to the themes they chose.

[Alleo]

I'm referring to stuff like this. It has nothing to do with whether or not you like or dislike Endwalker. A good portion of my friends like Endwalker and I have no problem with them because they're not disingenuous and don't say/do things like calling people Russian sympathizers if they like Garlemald. I've sadly had the displeasure of interacting with the people I've listed and each has earned my distaste for them by being intellectually dishonest.

Where were you when he called me offputting by simply liking how cute the new beast tribe is? Or when he said that people that liked Endwalker never knew loss or are handling it wrong? Why is it that Kazemons post is so bad, yet he can bascially insult everyone who disagrees with him, including saying something about their personal grief. What about being called a four year old just because one enjoys the questline of a beast tribe?

But I guess we who like Endwalker deserve this while anyone who doesnt like it, is a victim.

Dont complain about people slinging mud when you guys are bascially having a mud war against others the whole time...

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.

The self insert was about the character not him as a person...he bascially has a alt character who is a dark blonde elezen with that name which he then uses for the main NPC in Garlemald. It feels to me like he self inserted his own playable character (not himself...) into the rewrite of the story.

Edit:

In the end I dont understand why Endwalker is so horrible. Aveyond wants to have destruction, death and seemingly no real happy ending.
Well if you like the opposing factions like Garlemald or the Ascians, isnt that what you got? Garlemald got their whole city destroyed, with a huge amount of the people death. We did not get a happy ending for the Ascians or the Ancients either. Instead of being able to change their fates, it happened again. All of the "heros" on that side are death.

I mean that seems to be a perfect ending for a very grim dark story? The only thing missing is the WoL being able to join that faction like you do in WoW. If you could this would have bascially be a expanion full of huge losses.

But I guess it comes down to not wanting happy ends for those characters you dont like, while wanting one for those you do. Not very dark imo. I will never understand how one can be so angry about the scions surviving while also saying that we should have created a split timeline where the Ancients survive. That would mean that one person was able to change the bad outcome for millions of lifeforms. I would have nothing against such a story plot. But I also love happy endings.

Anyway I am looking forward to the last quest of the beast tribe and what they will do with the unsolved plot point. I really hope we get another section of Elysium in the style of the missing ones.