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

[Absurdity]

*Checks metacritic*

GoT season 8: 4.1

Endwalker: 9.1

I have to wonder, do you ever just think to yourselves "You know what? I'm in the minority here. The majority of players really loved this, and I didn't."? Because at least then I could sympathize with people hating Endwalker. I can see how people would hate it. I disliked some parts of it. Comparing it to Season 8 of GoT however, which was almost universally criticized for rushing to finish the story is just being disingenuous.

YOU didn't like it. From really any metric you can take however, most FFXIV players did.

Not like "most" players liking it is especially hard to achieve. Most players in this game do not look at a story with any kind of critical eye, they do exactly what the company wants from them, buy product, consume product, get excited for next product.

All Endwalker really needed to do for a 9/10 after the ShB hype machine was give them their favourite characters from previous expansions to fangirl/fanboy over, some pretty visuals to look at, grand speeches about saving the world and some kind of feel good "message" that ties everything together neatly while actually ending the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.

You don't need to necessarily provide an actual good product for people to rate it highly, best example being the 2022 movie Glass Onion.
It sits at a 92% critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes despite it's plot having more holes than swiss cheese and every one of it's miriad plot contrivances being explained away by "the villains are just really stupid".

[Kozh]

Not like "most" players liking it is especially hard to achieve. Most players in this game do not look at a story with any kind of critical eye, they do exactly what the company wants from them, buy product, consume product, get excited for next product.

Yup, this. And it’s frankly pretty obvious when you realize that the majority of players doesn’t even get the lore right. Even the mentors on lore channel of subreddit discord server made mistakes yet act like they’re all-knowing.

[Rilifane]

Not like "most" players liking it is especially hard to achieve. Most players in this game do not look at a story with any kind of critical eye, they do exactly what the company wants from them, buy product, consume product, get excited for next product.

All Endwalker really needed to do for a 9/10 after the ShB hype machine was give them their favourite characters from previous expansions to fangirl/fanboy over, some pretty visuals to look at, grand speeches about saving the world and some kind of feel good "message" that ties everything together neatly while actually ending the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.

You don't need to necessarily provide an actual good product for people to rate it highly, best example being the 2022 movie Glass Onion.
It sits at a 92% critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes despite it's plot having more holes than swiss cheese and every one of it's miriad plot contrivances being explained away by "the villains are just really stupid".

Or if we want an in-universe example we need to look no further than Y'shtola.
Darling scholary sassy uwu waifu cat girl, has been around for many years yet saw almost no character development let alone enough to justify her being around for so long and getting this much screentime, had multiple fake deaths, only faced pseudo-consequences but as long as her fanclub gets a few tear-jerking moments that make them want to hug their darling waifu, a magical girl scene, a cute "oh oops book fell on my head uwu haha :3" scene and a sassy reply every once in a while that makes them go "OMG y'shtola's answer... I CAN'T I'M CRYING LMAO XDDDD" they'll be happy.
But looking at it a bit more objectively, she's a bland character that barely changed and doesn't have any special role that other characters couldn't easily fill just fine.

[Jettinson]

Or if we want an in-universe example we need to look no further than Y'shtola.
Darling scholary sassy uwu waifu cat girl, has been around for many years yet saw almost no character development let alone enough to justify her being around for so long and getting this much screentime, had multiple fake deaths, only faced pseudo-consequences but as long as her fanclub gets a few tear-jerking moments that make them want to hug their darling waifu, a magical girl scene, a cute "oh oops book fell on my head uwu haha :3" scene and a sassy reply every once in a while that makes them go "OMG y'shtola's answer... I CAN'T I'M CRYING LMAO XDDDD" they'll be happy.
But looking at it a bit more objectively, she's a bland character that barely changed and doesn't have any special role that other characters couldn't easily fill just fine.

With how you say, it really makes me think Papalymo died because he wasn't a pretty cat girl, damn it....

[Absimiliard]

With how you say, it really makes me think Papalymo died because he wasn't a pretty cat girl, damn it....

You mean he didn't?

[Vyrerus]

Takes a dump on Rian Johnson's Glass Onion

I love you. :hearteyes:

On another more generalized note: Critics and audience scores these days are heavily manipulated anyway.

Like when something that had official critics paid off to give positive reviews rates super poorly among the audience, they cry that it's being review bombed by trolls. This actually just equates to there being so many negative reviews that they couldn't prune them and curve up its review score.

Video game scores are usually a bit better, but the bigger the studio the more out the ass they pay for good reviews and awards. Just look at God of War 6(Ragnarok). It got oodles and boodles of awards, mainly from paying to be given them because it was a solid, big budget game. They just couldn't out pay 9 months of good faith from Elden Ring to cinch that GOTY award.

It's similar to pop politicians writing books. Popular politicians write books. Most of them are garbage, but they go onto the New York Times Bestseller's list almost instantly because their political party buys a million copies and ships them to a warehouse to collect dust. The optics received from that is that said politician is a talented writer that people love to read, but in reality there's far less people reading them, and they usually didn't even write the book themselves.