Quote Originally Posted by Absurdity View Post
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.