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

[AwesomeJr44]

Its like any of us who enjoyed Endwalker saying that anyone negative or expressing valid constructive criticism is not worthy of engagement.

Sadly, when you have a sizable and vocal portion of a group of people prove themselves to not be worth engaging with, it builds up the sentiment that that group isn't worth engaging with in general. The solution would be for people who like Endwalker to show that there are good faith people to be found amongst them. Although I believe that more of them must exist somewhere, I have yet to see more than a handful of pro-Endwalker people who are not also lunatics, people who argue in bad faith, etc.

[Teraq]

Sadly, when you have a sizable and vocal portion of a group of people prove themselves to not be worth engaging with, it builds up the sentiment that that group isn't worth engaging with in general. The solution would be for people who like Endwalker to show that there are good faith people to be found amongst them. Although I believe that more of them must exist somewhere, I have yet to see more than a handful of pro-Endwalker people who are not also lunatics, people who argue in bad faith, etc.

I have actually seen one person like this in the past few weeks! On Reddit, in fact – but not the cesspools that are FFXIV subs, a more general gaming sub. The person asking me my opinion liked Endwalker and was genuinely curious about why I hated its handling of Ancients when they had never heard of any negative opinion about EW. I replied, naturally, with a massive wall of text, and they thanked me for it and it was all very civil.

I wish more interactions were like this.

But no, instead, this fanbase tends to be as toxic as it gets when you offer criticism. Which is just weird to me, frankly, because it isn't something I had experienced in my recent fandoms of WoW, Pokémon and ASOIAF. Dissent was common and a normal part of discussion. Like, yeah, Game Freak is lazy, Blizzard is Blizzard, and AFFC was slow and the series peaked with ASOS.

I have no idea why FFXIV, in contrast, feels such like a cult.

To say that Endwalker is the sole culprit for my rebound depression last year would be a lie. Because I would ascribe a large part of the blame on how the fanbase has treated me and people like me. We're pushed out of discussion so much that people like the Reddit person I mentioned have never heard negative opinions. I now mostly keep my FFXIV opinions pointedly outside of FFXIV subs, because I'm less likely to get attacked for daring to say something negative about the story. Still get downvoted, of course, but that's par for the course.

Oh, and it is disingenuous (as always with this community) to say we "can't take criticism" because a particular thread has been brought up by a big name content creator and some people might be feeling iffy about that. These people have a massive audience and platform, and FFXIV players are notorious for being rather unhinged outside of the game (which, thankfully, has a draconian enough TOS that it stifles them as they deserve). Now, Mr Happy in particular did not name names, and that's cool of him. But honestly, I am not putting it past some members of his audience to act like psychopaths over a game they've built their identity around, honestly.

[AwesomeJr44]

I have actually seen one person like this in the past few weeks! On Reddit, in fact – but not the cesspools that are FFXIV subs, a more general gaming sub. The person asking me my opinion liked Endwalker and was genuinely curious about why I hated its handling of Ancients when they had never heard of any negative opinion about EW. I replied, naturally, with a massive wall of text, and they thanked me for it and it was all very civil.

This is the type of person I want to see more often. If encountering someone like this felt less like an exception to the rule, I'd be much more willing to engage with the endwalker enjoyers.

[ReynTime]

Ah, no, sorry, two different things. Here's the bit from Zepla's stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHI1YL7850g
The video kind of questioning her is someone else entirely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad6O0vSKWps

Not that the guy is entirely right in his assessment either, IMO. But the comments are… interesting…

I stopped watching when he described the dialogue in the sundering scene as "god-tier" and the way they reinterpreted the lyrics of Answer "genius"...

[Striker44]

I stopped watching when he described the dialogue in the sundering scene as "god-tier" and the way they reinterpreted the lyrics of Answer "genius"...

So, you stopped watching when someone offered an opinion you disagree with? And people wonder why this place gets called an echo chamber of negativity...

[Axxion]

So, you stopped watching when someone offered an opinion you disagree with? And people wonder why this place gets called an echo chamber of negativity...

I mean you can pick a choose. A few places like outside can be positive and negative. all depends on how you look at it

I stopped watching when he described the dialogue in the sundering scene as "god-tier" and the way they reinterpreted the lyrics of Answer "genius"...

ill say keep going he does make interesting points

[Graeham]

We share the Madge King excite over the world wide fame bestow on him by grace of the Happy streamer. Guild work hard at the course correction and did not expect to be the providing unintentional comedy for the millions of the fans it is the double winning. We can now having the inspiration to continue the fight to bring the burger meme to the new generator of fan.

[AwesomeJr44]

And people wonder why this place gets called an echo chamber of negativity...

The forums gets called an echo chamber of negativity by your imaginary majority. (and people who either don't actually use the forums or are so steeped in toxic positivity that any negativity being allowed to exist = echo chamber of negativity)

[aveyond-dreams]

I stopped watching when he described the dialogue in the sundering scene as "god-tier" and the way they reinterpreted the lyrics of Answer "genius"...

I mean it was god-tier bad and some of the worst narrative gaslighting I've ever seen, so I suppose it's genius in the way it really managed to ruin the whole story in a span of about 15 minutes.

[aveyond-dreams]

It's curious how some of Endwalker's most ardent defenders feel so threatened at times that they've resorted to saying emotionally manipulative things like this:

Heck, when Soken revealed he was recovering from cancer back in ShB, a group of 40 musicians put together a tribute for him. When "Close in the Distance" came out for EW, a group of 1000 people submitted voice recordings to create a fan-made version of it. Again - when you have by far the largest number of people playing, you will also likely have the largest # of people doing anything (including complaining or creating "backlash"). In terms of the size of the playerbase? The "backlash" is minuscule. Frankly, I can easily see the next "10-year plan" going off quite well given the current trajectory of the game.

For future reference I would advise permanently putting such individuals on one's ignore list. When the differences between both camps are this irreconcilable there really is no point in entertaining any sort of back and forth. In other words, agree to disagree and end it there.

All they have are passive aggressive attempts to paint those of us who dared to question the story as bad guys or incessant harping on semantics to the point where no meaningful discussion can possibly be had because of their obtuse demands that every other statement be preceded by "in my opinion" or something along those lines.

Do not submit to these people under any circumstances and never change the way you speak to suit their whims.