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

[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?

[BRVV]

Oh it definitely works. She seems to create WoLs as fodders to prevent complete rejoining. Until the one guy she’s waiting for appears, then protect him at all cost. And the First? Of course she tried to save it, the time travel plan depended on it lol.

If she truly want to prevent rejoining, why bother spared emet? Even one unsundered surviving is a risk for the sundered.

"Sowwy i let you die but i have to because i got spoilers from the future uwu" - Venat, probably.

That's why i hate this time travel but no change BS. With that in place we could travel to the future, see everyone dead and then go back and kill everyone to preserve that future which cannot be avoided. So who is to blame? Is everything set in stone and meaningless?

[VentVanitas]

I really liked Pandaemonium so far too, but I reserve my judgement fom the time being. There's a lot that could potentially go wrong in a single patch.

Yyyup. One patch was all it took to ruin the Eden story for me because I was genuinely interested in learning about Eden itself and it all went out the window as soon as Mitron appeared. Felt so lazy, "sike! it was ascians all along". Praying the last tier of Pandaemonium won't take a nosedive with its story too.

[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.

[AwesomeJr44]

I know this has been posted here, but I feel it's somewhat relevant again. I'd be curious of people's own scores/comments.

Here's mine. I'm not usually into RP but this was a fun activity.

(Looking back, I probably would give Graha 0 stars if I had thought to do so lol)

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.

This is why I have zero faith in sites like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes. Most of the reviews are bought and paid for and in the few cases where genuine negative reviews outweigh the paid ones, it's labeled as 'review bombing'. Review sites these days are a joke.

[Vyrerus]

For me it's something like:

Thancred - 4.5 stars
Estinien - 5 stars
Alisaie - 5 stars
Alphinaud - 3 stars
G'raha Tia - 2 stars
Krile - 1 star
Tataru - 2 stars
Minfilia - 1 star
Ryne - 3 stars
Y'shtola - 3 stars
Urianger - 4 stars

I like'em mostly, but they could all stand to become actual characters again rather than scriptwriter mouthpieces/WoL praise machines.

[Striker44]

I LOVE how every other page someone pops up "THIS IS YOUR OPINION NOT FACT REEE!" while it's the "Endwalker-is-the-best" group that spouts out their opinion as fact and use metacritic as "proof". Such nonsense.

It's interesting how many people that disliked EW's story like me, liked Garlemald - i did aswell.

They don't use metacritic as fact, just one of an overwhelming deluge of pieces of evidence pointing to it being highly successful. The reality that even in the "lulls", the active playerbase is still hundreds of thousands of players (aka significantly larger than similar "lulls" in other expansions). Heck, it's frequently pointing out the bitter cabal's own claims that there are apparently dozens upon dozens of subreddits and other sites absolutely filled with "white knights" who love the game, and how this forum with a select small group of unique posters is the only place on the entire internet where you can actually be negative about this game...and yet somehow, those few magically outnumber all of those other sites. I like to point out that you can go to just one single YT video on EW and likely find hundreds of unique posters talking about how much they've enjoyed it (aka far more than the group on here naysaying it).

[KageTokage]

I'm more curious about why you continue to care so much about people disliking something if it is liked by the "overwhelming majority".

We're exceedingly unlikely to be noticed by the devs/writers, much less actually influence their choices for better or worse, nor do most of us operate under the illusion that isn't the case.

[Rolder50]

The reality that even in the "lulls", the active playerbase is still hundreds of thousands of players (aka significantly larger than similar "lulls" in other expansions).

Where exactly are you getting these numbers?

[aveyond-dreams]

I'm more curious about why you continue to care so much about people disliking something if it is liked by the "overwhelming majority".

Because goodness forbid things change for the better around here. The objective reality is that this has been the most polarizing expansion where something has gone wrong in every aspect of the game - starting with the story.

I went from Shadowbringers being invested in the MSQ, the 8man, and the trial series to...Just the 8man in Endwalker because we lost the trial series, the base MSQ was a disaster and the patch MSQ is a terrible FFIV ripoff, and the Alliance Raid is little more than a vehicle for a handful of individuals to shove in both their prescribed comfort characters and self inserts that nobody asked for.

You cannot ask me to endure a 7.0 that repeats these mistakes.