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

[KageTokage]

3) On that note, Endwalker should have been split into two expansions. Or the initial story should have been entirely focused on Thavanir/a Garlemald that wasn't already off-screen'd, while the post-story should have then gone into the Moon/End Days stuff. Cramming Ala Mhigo and Doma into the same expansion was the #1 criticism of Stormblood, so I'm not sure why the writers thought that doing an extreme version of this in Endwalker by cramming four major regions into one expansion (Garlemald, Thavanir, Sharlaya, and the Moon/Ultima Thule) into the initial story was a good idea.

That's the thing.

Endwalker was originally intended to be two expansions as per some past interviews, with Garlemald slated as being the endpoint for the first of them, meaning the tower business was supposed to be a much more lasting threat then it was.

That would've presumably left the Final Days with an expansion to itself and a lot more time for the subplots surrounding it to develop.

[SaitoHikari]

That's the thing.

Endwalker was originally intended to be two expansions as per some past interviews, with Garlemald slated as being the endpoint for the first of them, meaning the tower business was supposed to be a much more lasting threat then it was.

That would've presumably left the Final Days with an expansion to itself and a lot more time for the subplots surrounding it to develop.

Good lord, this explains a lot. You can basically tell this was a consequence of the writers writing themselves into a corner with Varis dying and Zenos basically hijacking the plot from the Garlean side of the story.

[Sevan]

The Ancients should still be extinct.
Although a total of four people found Meteion, two of whom desperately tried to save Venat and Wol (the only reasonable explanation seems to be that they wanted Venat and Wol to retain their memories and tell people the urgent information). At the time they smiled and appeared to trust Venat and Wol, but Venat and Wol chose to withhold the information.
When the Ancients faced the disaster with no knowledge, they did their best to save their planet, and they also brought it back to life, Venat made a grand entrance, saying that there were too many sacrifices too cruel. She said she wanted to check Zodiak, many believed her, and when she had the power of these supporters, she destroyed everything.
The people she opposed, the people who supported her, the people she claimed to protect, all shattered.
But the Ancients should still be extinct.
Because they could not give color to the flowers.
Although they could create Meteion. they must not have been able to create weapons against Meteion.
Don't think this is unreasonable.
Because Venat has destroyed them all, so of course they can't create weapons.
Although it seems that if these flowers, grow in the pandaemonium, they can turn the pandaemonium into a disco.
But the ancients should be extinct, Venat is the hero.
Although it seems that she just wants, just wants, to use this opportunity to become the only supreme goddess.
She is even, the will of the planet, although it is not clear that she and the planet, have any good relationship.
Don't question it or you should stop playing the game. This is a game you have loved for so many years that you can recite almost every story setting.
Incidentally, The Twelve are the only true gods in the world.
People in other areas believe in false gods.
You are from, the most superior people.
You can make flowers change color, and your gods love your world, and you alone. You believe in the true God, the true Jesus. No wonder the pagans who believe in false gods, who use all their efforts to survive, have to become inferior monsters. People who try hard are no better than those who only sleep and say to themselves "never mind" before a disaster.
The logic here is simple: pagans deserve to die.
I am not a subtle Japanese, and I don't understand the rules of speech in the English-speaking world's online society.
I can only honestly say that this is the most chauvinistic game I have ever played.
The irony is that if I hadn't loved the game, if I hadn't read the story carefully, if I hadn't still held out hope, like a WOWER, I wouldn't have found this.

[MikkoAkure]

That's the thing.

Endwalker was originally intended to be two expansions as per some past interviews, with Garlemald slated as being the endpoint for the first of them, meaning the tower business was supposed to be a much more lasting threat then it was.

That would've presumably left the Final Days with an expansion to itself and a lot more time for the subplots surrounding it to develop.

This seems to be an often misquoted or misunderstood fact that it was "originally intended to be 2 before being cut to 1 later" when in the original interview Yoshi-P said "1-2". What everyone takes as "oh, there were going to be two expansions and the first was just going to be Garlemald" was the interviewer asking what it would have been like if there were 2 instead after Yoshi-P's 1-2 remark.

Yoshida goes on to explain that around the time of Stormblood, the team didn’t really think about how the story would continue long term. When making Shadowbringers, it was said that about 80% of the plot points have been revealed, and he thought after ShB it may be possible to keep things going from 1-2 more expansions. Looking at the fan response immediately after ShB, he felt that there should be one more expansion.

Interviewer: If the story had been 2 expansions and continued up to 7.0, what was the planned structure?

Ishikawa: We expected that there’d be 1 expansion about Garlemald. The idea was that Anima would be the boss, then the next expansion you’d fight against Hydaelyn, Zodiark and so on.

Oda: So the flow of the story itself didn’t change too much.

They had to come up with the story in the Autumn of 2019 right after Shadowbringers released so that the cinematics team could begin work on the trailer, so all of this was thought up before the towers came into the game. Nothing was supposed to be one way or the other, just one or two and they settled on one instead of two and the story stayed the same but zoomed through at a breakneck pace.


This brings me back to my point before of Shadowbringers kind of ruining the direction of the plot despite being critically well received. Stormblood keeps pushing the story into a showdown with Garlemald but then 4.4 and 4.5 start taking the Scions away to the First and the entire plot gets derailed by a side-adventure to rescue them from a whole other dimension and prevent another Calamity while "Meanwhile, in Garlemald" the war kind of just stops and stays in a status quo while waiting for the WoL to get back and NPCs end up doing things and going on adventures we should have done.

Either Yoshi-P, Oda, or Ishikawa said something in an interview ahead of Shadowbringers' release along the lines that the players may end up feeling they "revealed too much information" and they're right. The first 90% of 5.0 doesn't exactly move the game's plot forward as a whole, but Tempest and 5.1-5.3 let the whole cat out of the bag and revealed most of the backstory of the game. This and the overwhelmingly positive response to ShB seemingly forced their hand to wrap it all up sooner rather than later.

Two expansions after Shadowbringers would have let things sink in a little longer, but considering Oda said that the story would've been the same, the people in this thread would have had the exact same criticisms of Garlemald being destroyed off-screen and the issues with Venat.

[RyuuZero]

I don't think that the EW MSQ was lackluster, it's slower than Shadowbringers and maybe more set in a way since we're on the Source again but it's stated to end the entire Hydaelyn & Zodiark Arc and that was certainly achieved. The Part that I in retrospect may like the least might be the Elpis Part, only for it's retcon nature, but that Part is still well executed.. though I may played the EW MSQ too soon with Alts since I realized feeling burned out really soon.. like a lil bit after the first Alts Playthrough and very noticible after the 2nd Alt. With that said I think you only can experience Endwalker really only once and It's true that Shadowbringers nailed the feeling & pacing way better, though my personal favorite moment in the MSQ is 4.3 so technicly I could say it's all the way down from there but I do not do that because let's face the truth: In Shadowbringers, Soken became a God and when Endwalker goes Hard in the End there is no holding back. Though it's true that I have no expectation for the Story: My Expectations for Shadowbringers were that I drive with my Regalia through Norvrandt and my Expectations for Endwalker were that I drive with my Regalia on the Moon and I didn't got disappounted. My only contempt is their Combat Job Diesgn Direction but Let's what 7.0 Dawnsinger brings to the table.

[SaitoHikari]

Two expansions after Shadowbringers would have let things sink in a little longer, but considering Oda said that the story would've been the same, the people in this thread would have had the exact same criticisms of Garlemald being destroyed off-screen and the issues with Venat.

The story being the same does not mean the presentation would have remained the same, which is what we're really arguing about. Garlemald would still be destroyed in the end, but it's likely that if the Garlemald arc wasn't basically condensed into a single zone, a lot of what happened wouldn't have been off-screened to make way for the Final Days arc. I personally find the Venat arguments a bit overdone too, when such arguments are most likely a consequence of her arc being just as condensed. Who knows how much cut context we're missing from both sides of the expansion as a result?

(Also, I sincerely hope that the devs never make another multi-expansion villain like Zenos ever again, or at least one we already fought coming back from the dead and undercutting other plot threads older than his introduction the way he did.)

[Teraq]

But the underlying reasons for that didn't begin with Endwalker - and I'm about to say something that's probably going to be really controversial in these parts, considering the whole 'Shadowbringers good, Endwalker bad' angle that some posters are arguing in this thread.

For all the praise Shadowbringers gets, people don't seem to recognize that the storytelling in Endwalker is 100% a direct consequence of the drastic shift in storytelling that began with Shadowbringers.

Namely, the COMPLETE shift from the main antagonists being the Garlean Empire (with some Ascian stuff sprinkled throughout) which was built up for all of level 1-70, to the whole Ancient stuff for levels 70-80, which ultimately ended with Garlemald being destroyed off-screen with zero input from the main cast, with the entire plot being completely hijacked by the Ancients (and Zenos being dragged along for the ride).
(good post snip)

I suppose I should bear some responsibility for the latest outburst of "MAN I MISS SHB!", though I must note that I only ever brought up its nuance on both sides of the main conflict compared to Endwalker's falling down yet another branch from the manichaean tree, not how award-worthy its story is in general (it isn't). Completely agree that the Garlemald storyline was shafted – 5.0 marked the moment when I became truly sick of Zenos as opposed to just "oh he's still alive I guess hmmmm ok", because I thought the Garlean/Ilsabardian politics in post-Stormblood had such potential, Varis had only just stepped into the limelight at long last! It's a shame this setting keeps coming up with good ideas and never really delivers on what they've built up.

They made such a rush job of both the Garlemald plot and the Ascian plot. And I mean Ascians that aren't named Emet-Selch.

They apparently rushed because they wanted to capitalize on the ShB momentum, and for what? They only had their writing "residential" for 7.0 this summer. So they… clumsily threw away their most compelling stories for a new plot they hadn't even defined yet? And so far I can't say it's been worth it, judging by the MSQ.

(By the way, you can write everything in a single long post by editing it to bypass the character limit. Just write everything you want to write, then cut enough to get the forums to accept your post, then edit it and paste what you just cut. I wouldn't be able to live without this ONE SIMPLE TRICK. Doctors hate her!)

And there were signs (and I don't recall if this was outright stated by the writers themselves, I distinctly remember something to this effect being mentioned at one point) that the writers actually weren't really sure how they wanted to wrap up the story in Endwalker until halfway through Shadowbringers too.

Yeah, I remember interviews around 5.3 saying they had basically been writing post-ShB things by the seat of the pants. They just knew they wanted the 5.3 fight to be Elidibus – but not really how. It shows. They had no idea what to do with the longest-standing antagonist of the H/Z arc and it shows.

Prior discussion has gone over every one of Venat's weird, thin, unconvincing excuses ad nauseum (what is the Echo? We just don't know), but what it comes down to is: once again, Venat agrees with the premise of Hermes's test and wants to see it carried out. She fundamentally chose to say nothing because she wanted to see mankind take on Meteion's challenge and prove her wrong. Proving that Meteion was wrong about the worth of Life as a universal concept is, to Venat, worth burning up trillions of individual lives. The second she says "we must prove ourselves equal to Hermes's test and prove man is worthy to exist," everything else is just mealy-mouthed spice on top because somewhere, deep down, both she and the writers know that it sounds really bad to flat out say "I think the Ancients should be hit with the Final Days actually" and spread a layer of very thin plausible deniability (of course, a good person would prioritize saving lives, and we want you to see Venat as a good person so mumblemumble) around it.

At its very core, Endwalker's story hinges on rejecting the notion, implied by Shadowbringers, that both sides were equal and had an equally good enough reason to fight: simply wanting to survive and exist, and fighting for that right. Both sides were people fighting for their loved ones – and it didn't matter how much better the world unsundered was or wasn't. The scenes immediately before and after the Amaurot dungeon are still IMO the most intense of Final Fantasy XIV. The humanization of the Ancients did so much heavy lifting for Shadowbringers's emotional impact, it is still inconceivable to me that they chose to go with a sequel that not only fundamentally downplays it, but pulls out a bunch of emotionally manipulative tricks to try and convince me to get on board with it. To throw away such a raw and gray conflict for a cliché as tired as "highly advanced precursor race brought down by their hubris – plucky little human so much better precisely because they aren't perfect" is almost offensive to me. Endwalker functions on the assumption that the sides of the conflict were not, in fact, equal, because the Ancients were fundamentally flawed – both morally and biologically – and this makes them deserving of their fate.

Oh, sure, it plays coy about it. We get to watch how much Venat suffers from the suffering she inflicts on everyone else but herself. We get to hear her make convoluted excuses for why her hands were SO TOTALLY TIED SHE DID THE ONLY THING SHE COULD!!!!. We get to see Hermes hermesing all over the place, which amounts to the game waving a giant "THE ANCIENTS WERE SO CALLOUS AND UNCARING AND UNFEELING" sign all throughout Elpis and wordlessly mouthing "DON'T YOU THINK THAT'S A LITTLE F'ED UP?" at us. The game both wants to play it up as a horrible tragedy for everyone involved which Venat had no choice but to follow through, while also having her take Hermes far more seriously than he deserves and uphold his stupid "test" wholeheartedly – and the rest of the story makes it unambiguous we are supposed to think she is right for it, for thinking her people unworthy of existing after having put them in a horrible situation through her own actions and selective inaction. Much like Schrodinger's Venat strives to avert the Final Days at the same time as she is making sure the time loop happens, you can't really have the plot try to take the Shadowbringers route of "omg they were all justified/right/wrong in their own right, it's so tragic!!!" while telling you out of the side of its mouth that one side was correct while the other had no future and were doomed to their shallow paradise (an assertion that is very debatable to begin with).

And worst of all: Venat gets no opposition in the narrative. Whatever balance ShB might have had in how it presented its core conflict is gone. By the time the full story is revealed in all its stupidity, Lahabrea and Elidibus are dead, and I'm not sure how to call the abomination we summon at the end of Ultima Thule, making excuses for a person that made him and his brethren into villains, suffering in solitude for twelve thousand years and ending up being killed by their close friend whom said person groomed into that role. That's okay, look at him blaming himself for being hit by Hermes's retcon beam and not… figuring it out by himself… somehow?… and that's his fault?? I guess????????

We are all dumber for experiencing Endwalker.

Congratulations, that's not what they were trying to do. At all. They were trying to undo the Sundering, which was not an act of creation, but an act of malformation.

It is also worth repeating – again – that the Convocation's original plan as we know it did not go beyond the third sacrifice, which explicitly would not wipe out all the wildlife/totally sapient humanoids/ANCIENT BABIES(?!?!). It is only in Endwalker that we are introduced to the slippery slope fallacy of "THEY WOULD HAVE SACRIFICED ALL FUTURE LIFE TO BRING BACK THE PAST!!!!" via a shoddily written parallel to strawman aliens and an atrocious scene with no basis in reality according to known backstory that can only be described as Venat suffering from a rapid-fire sequence of self-aggrandizing hallucinations. It's fine, though, there's emotional music playing in the background so everyone cried. She loved mankind (You™ in particular, though) so much, she had TRULY NO OTHER CHOICES!

The Convocation's goal is what it has always been: being the keepers of the planet which, from the Unsundered's POV, has been broken beyond recognition – hence, they are fixing it (they had TRULY NO OTHER CHOICES, tbh!). I'm not sure at which point this entails wiping out all of creation. On the Shards, perhaps? Yes, but hey, blame Venat for that one; she's the one who committed to a time loop that would annihilate at least 7 of them, and never cared enough to save them from the apocalypse.

Is this really the hill you want to die on?

I'd say mods are asleep at the wheel but that would imply they were even driving at some point. This bad faith caricature has been allowed to post since June in spite of multiple reports. Says a lot about how little SE cares, and how childish someone on the white knight side is.

[Brinne]

At its very core, Endwalker's story hinges on rejecting the notion, implied by Shadowbringers, that both sides were equal and had an equally good enough reason to fight: simply wanting to survive and exist, and fighting for that right. Both sides were people fighting for their loved ones – and it didn't matter how much better the world unsundered was or wasn't.

Still medication-posting, against my better judgment, for some reason.

(Also, obligatory side declaration of being That Person who not only thinks Endwalker Zenos ruled and was perfectly written, but thinks Garlemald's general fate was narratively appropropriate and while it could have used more screentime and time to breathe, a dedicated Garlemald expansion almost certainly wouldn't have fixed Endwalker's issues.)

Yeah, this basically hits on what made Shadowbringers both touching and compelling. Again, what came after is ultimately the result, I think, of the devs sitting down and deciding their priority for Endwalker was to deliver a message from Them, The Developers, to Us, The Players - rather than concentrating on their lore and worldbuilding as, well, a living and breathing world that encourages empathy in an outward direction, towards the representations of others who aren't us. Endwalker is almost breathtakingly inward-directed. In this way, when considering a global pandemic that caused a lot of widespread depression, the devs thought that "is life even worth living?" was one they wanted to tackle head on and answer with a clear, affirmative YES - for our sakes, the sakes of the ones sitting in their gaming chairs - rather than "the question is inherently invalid," which is the approach Shadowbringers took because Shadowbringers focused on the human elements of the in-universe characters.

In this way, Venat's speech on the bridge where she starts talking about feeling a "presence without" - that she thinks God is talking to her, more or less - ends up being true! The devs' voices are directly in her ear, guiding her actions from the priorities of a different reality altogether, rather than adhering to the logic of the one Venat actually resides in. This is why she had to Sunder, leading ultimately to the game we play. This is why she had to accept the challenge of the question and the "test" - to deliver that direct, affirmative YES to us, rather than possibly sidestepping the question and saving billions of lives around her.

From that perspective, the "good intentions" make sense. Unfortunately, though, for those who do care about and primarily see things from a worldbuilding, in-universe perspective for the story, a different message entirely gets created, because anything in a game would be expendable compared to that theme delivered to us humans on Earth, right? But when you take people not in the player in-group as people (as they were presented as of one (1) expansion prior), rather than simple thematic devices that exist for our sake, you form an extremely unfortunate contrapositive where there also exists a negative answer - THEY failed the test to prove they were "worthy to exist," unlike US/YOU. A failure state to the question of "are you worthy to exist" is created, and then worse, illustrated. And it's done so by suggesting problems of individual weakness, or even more unfortunately, sometimes, inherent racial or cultural problems on such a broad scale that it ends up providing grounds for the writing off of and subsequent mass murder of billions - to pave the way for people (us!!!) who will be worthy by contrast.

And not universally, but I suspect several depressed or struggling people are inclined to see the crafted existence of a failure state as "I would obviously be someone vulnerable to that failure state" and relate to its illustrations moreso than the heroes. People who bought into Shadowbringers's "humanize and validate everyone" approach would be thrown by "wait, since when is it okay to write off entire swaths of people as inherently unworthy to live, or by unideal emotional responses be 'shown' to be unworthy? That's really messed up?" And some weird people (hello) are generally brainbroken and tend to be inherently suspicious of the heroic fantasy tendency (and extremely ugly historical tendency) to otherize and invalidate people who don't belong in the POV characters' in-groups.

For Endwalker, well, it's a video game! They were never alive. They're just symbolic generalities. They're a vehicle to deliver that heartwarming, affirmative message to YOU! Don't worry about it! Their failure state could never apply to YOU! Even the people who failed to answer YES to the question are now rallying behind YOU and are happy that even if they couldn't, YOU are the one who gets the affirmation! And YOU are so great in being capable of answering YES to the question that you can even inspire and uplifts the others who couldn't do it for themselves! Happy ending for everyone.

I mean, I can see the good intent, but from my perspective - yeah, and my own values and ideology - that question will never ring true except as an excuse, intended or no, malicious or benevolent, even if born more from thoughtlessness than anything targeted - to create that contrapositive and the possibility of the failure state. Endwalker, in this regard, is wrong. Nobody is unworthy of existing. Nobody has to justify themselves. Nobody has to prove that it's okay for them to live. Nobody has the right to cut someone's life short or declare them dead ends, just because of a belief that they're heading towards a nebulous "bad outcome." Sometimes, in the broader world, decisions do have to be made - allocations of limited resources, or harm reduction, what have you - but Endwalker was completely uninterested in engaging with or trying to convince anyone who thinks that question being framed as a yes/no is ugly and invalid from the very beginning. It, well. It sure knew what it wanted to say, I suppose.

[Fiel_Tana]

And not universally, but I suspect several depressed people are inclined to see the crafted existence of a failure state as "I would obviously be someone vulnerable to that failure state" and relate to its illustrations moreso than the heroes. People who bought into Shadowbringers's "humanize and validate everyone" approach would be thrown by "wait, since when is it okay to write off entire swaths of people as inherently unworthy to live, or by unideal emotional responses be 'shown' to be unworthy? That's really messed up?" And some weird people (hello) are generally brainbroken and tend to be inherently suspicious of the heroic fantasy tendency (and extremely ugly historical tendency) to otherize and invalidate people who don't belong in the POV characters' in-groups.

For Endwalker, well, it's a video game! They were never alive. They're just symbolic generalities. They're a vehicle to deliver that heartwarming, affirmative message to YOU! Don't worry about it! Their failure state could never apply to YOU! Even the people who failed to answer YES to the question are now rallying behind YOU and are happy that even if they couldn't, YOU are the one who gets the affirmation! And YOU are so great in being capable of answering YES to the question that you can even inspire and uplifts the others who couldn't do it for themselves! Happy ending for everyone.

Thank you for writing this!

Yes! That was my experience of it. Was so hyped to play EW, looked forward to it for ages since FFXIV had become where I went to try to mend my brain, a place to relax, be social, think and be able to get away from thinking when needed, and be a bit happier. Endwalker hit me HARD and I spiralled badly back into a depression I was already struggling to get out of.

The question "Is life worth it?" being answered with "if you're the right type of person, with only acceptable emotions (absolutely NO sadness or fear!), in with the right crowd, in the right time and place. If not, then no, you're just not strong enough or what we consider worthy". Damn!

Not the message they wanted to send, but that's how it was received by me during play through. Add to it the gaslighting ("they deserved it", "there was no other way", "suffering is beautiful", "it hurt mommy more. Think of her pain!" etc.) and I spent literally months trying to crawl back out from under the dark storm cloud in my head.

I know that's not what the writers intended, EW was meant to be uplifting (others seemed to feel it was?), but for me, it was the direct opposite.

[ReynTime]

Thank you for writing this!

Yes! That was my experience of it. Was so hyped to play EW, looked forward to it for ages since FFXIV had become where I went to try to mend my brain, a place to relax, be social, think and be able to get away from thinking when needed, and be a bit happier. Endwalker hit me HARD and I spiralled badly back into a depression I was already struggling to get out of.

The question "Is life worth it?" being answered with "if you're the right type of person, with only acceptable emotions (absolutely NO sadness or fear!), in with the right crowd, in the right time and place. If not, then no, you're just not strong enough or what we consider worthy". Damn!

Not the message they wanted to send, but that's how it was received by me during play through. Add to it the gaslighting ("they deserved it", "there was no other way", "suffering is beautiful", "it hurt mommy more. Think of her pain!" etc.) and I spent literally months trying to crawl back out from under the dark storm cloud in my head.

I know that's not what the writers intended, EW was meant to be uplifting (others seemed to feel it was?), but for me, it was the direct opposite.

It's unfortunate you were affected that way by it. I can definitely see people's point when put that way. I'm surprised how easily the bizarre message is brushed off by content creators and streamers to this day. Though I've seen some people comment something similar on reddit lately.

I suffer from depression myself but tbh I ended not being affected emotionally at all by EW because the moment Meteion started her report I just thought "Oh no. They're going full pretentious and focus on the question of the meaning of life to make simpletons think Endwalker's writing is deep, aren't they...?" and it was like all the remaining channels of immersion with the MSQ shattered right there, and I was just continuing to make fun of MSQ with friends from there on.

My guess? We're told a lot about Ul'dah/Gridania/Limsa, but the game doesn't really show us much about them from an organizational level. Even the individual Grand Companies might as well be completely indistinguishable in regards to your membership within them, though you used to be completely locked to whichever faction you joined in PvP until the devs realized that it was a pretty bad idea as far as faction-based PvP matching went. We know way, WAY more about the Ascians and the Legati more than the high ranking members of each Grand Company aside from the leaders, for instance. This disconnect is arguably part of why something like the whole Chasing Ivy arc in ARR was a bit hollow - you're just told that the Alliance is trying to root out a spy, and you don't get to do anything in regards to that until you're asked to confront her at the last moment. Then she escapes once, gets caught again, and her existence is completely forgotten after that (though we should have had a chance to question Emperor Varis about her, or he should have mentioned her capture, considering he's the one that planted/reached her within the Immortal Flames to begin with). Even the Garleans don't really seem to address any differences between the Grand Companies either - Emperor Varis is literally the only Garlean in the entire game that seemingly cares about the differences between the Eorzean city-states.

It's also important to note that we also see a lot of the societal flaws within those three city-states, while we only distantly observe them at best when it comes to Amaurot and Garlemald, because both end up getting destroyed before we get to witness their flaws for ourselves.

I'd say people would actually care a lot more about Ul'dah/Limsa/Gridania if we were actually more involved in the Grand Companies that we're supposed to be members of. For years, I had been kicking around an idea about how Squadrons and the entire GC ranking system should be completely overhauled into a serious Final Fantasy Tactics-like minigame where you lead your entire Squadron into lore-relevant missions, complete with involved questlines that differ depending on your choice of Grand Company enlistment (although you'd get invitations to assist the other Grand Companies later). For example, if you were a part of the Malestrom, you'd get to see how diplomacy works between the pirates that you keep hearing so much about, and raid Garlean ships and deal with stuff like Sirens out at sea. Twin Adders could deal with stuff like cultists and expeditions into the West Shroud. Immortal Flames could go into corruption and dealing with cultists on their side of the border.

At the same time, some Garleans could stand to address your GC rank more - some extra world building flavor to add weight to your own threat level beyond just a simple adventurer that happens to be allied with Eorzea and kicking everyone's asses for breakfast.

This reminds me.

While everyone has always seemed to be just looking forward to new nations (which are all going to be glaringly obvious FFXIV versions of real world non-european nations for social media buzz sake) I always wished they would just add more side-stories with quest chains related to each starting nation's internal struggles more. Without Ascian or Hydaelin nonsense hijacking it. Get Matsuno to write those, while the rest of the Walt Disney tier stories that seem to be more popular with the stans can go on without interference.
There is so much lore and so many plot points they haven't done anything with in the 3 nations. And when they do, they seem to shit all over the potential (The Sil'dihn Subterrane storyline). Seriously, leave that kind of thing to Matsuno or some writer that isn't afraid of making more mature scripts.