Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[Aravell]

While it's true that the Final Fantasy series do use some of the tropes used in Endwalker, it does feel to me that Endwalker laid it on a bit thick. Well, 7.0 onwards will have a new lead writer, so I'm still willing to see how the story goes from here.

[IkaraGreydancer]

While it's true that the Final Fantasy series do use some of the tropes used in Endwalker, it does feel to me that Endwalker laid it on a bit thick. Well, 7.0 onwards will have a new lead writer, so I'm still willing to see how the story goes from here.

To thick in what way exactly? Also don't we already have new lead writers for the current story?

[Eorzean_username]

Well, 7.0 onwards will have a new lead writer, so I'm still willing to see how the story goes from here.

Ishikawa's been hands-off the direct writing since 6.10, having been promoted up to a creative lead ("Senior Story Designer") — so the same person who outlined the events of Endwalker, 6.10-6.40, and the 6.x Side Series will still be doing it. Some of the people in the trenches putting the script together have just been shuffled around.

The team "writing" the game is actually pretty "corporatised" and distributed, so the "Designers" at the top have the most influence over "what happens" and "why" — that will still be Ishikawa and Oda, moving forward.

ie, If you're not feeling the Lore/Story of things like Myths of the Realm, Palace of the "Hey everyone, just want to remind you... again... that Hermes and Amon and the Crystal Tower and Allag and Ishikawa's other pet obsessions exist!", the Void Friendship + Eating Food Saga, etc...

...then you're probably not going to see a very dramatic change in Meracydia (which is probably the destination because WOW always tries to copy its competitors preemptively, and WOW is currently on a remote island ruled by Dragons).

This presentation from a Live Letter gives a lot of insight into how the game is actually "written":
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/473934-Letter-from-the-Producer-LIVE-Part-LXXIII-%2810-31-2022%29?p=6118859&viewfull=1#post6118859

[TheDecay]

Ishikawa's been hands-off the direct writing since 6.10, having been promoted up to a creative lead ("Senior Story Designer") — so the same person who outlined the events of Endwalker, 6.10-6.40, and the 6.x Side Series will still be doing it. Some of the people in the trenches putting the script together have just been shuffled around.

The team "writing" the game is actually pretty "corporatised" and distributed, so the "Designers" at the top have the most influence over "what happens" and "why" — that will still be Ishikawa and Oda, moving forward.

ie, If you're not feeling the Lore/Story of things like Myths of the Realm, Palace of the "Hey everyone, just want to remind you... again... that Hermes and Amon and the Crystal Tower and Allag and Ishikawa's other pet obsessions exist!", the Void Friendship + Eating Food Saga, etc...

...then you're probably not going to see a very dramatic change in Meracydia (which is probably the destination because WOW always tries to copy its competitors preemptively, and WOW is currently on a remote island ruled by Dragons).

This presentation from a Live Letter gives a lot of insight into how the game is actually "written":
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/473934-Letter-from-the-Producer-LIVE-Part-LXXIII-%2810-31-2022%29?p=6118859&viewfull=1#post6118859

The "what happens" and "why" really aren't that big of a problem. Hermes being Amon is a cool concept in my humble opinion.

It's the writing that's the problem, and we really don't quite need more "the power of friendship" or inane fanservice/anime-style "slice of life" moments in the writing.

These concepts themselves are not the problem. Slice of life is actually important to a story, for example by demonstrating how Thavnairians are recovering from the Final Days. Slice of life such as having Zero looking at Estinien's abs is not.

[IkaraGreydancer]

The "what happens" and "why" really aren't that big of a problem. Hermes being Amon is a cool concept in my humble opinion.

It's the writing that's the problem, and we really don't quite need more "the power of friendship" or inane fanservice/anime-style "slice of life" moments in the writing.

These concepts themselves are not the problem. Slice of life is actually important to a story, for example by demonstrating how Thavnairians are recovering from the Final Days. Slice of life such as having Zero looking at Estinien's abs is not.

Sure there should be a balance there in terms of how SoL is handled but is 10 secs of ab staring really a point to make about it being used badly? It was there then it wasn't in a blink. Not every single scene in a game needs to to be important to the overarching story. Sometimes characters just have fun. FF games have always been this way.

Power of friendship didn't beat, Ultima Weapon, Niddhogg, Emet or Zenos. That theme was only heavy against Endsinger and that made sense. Now do we need that again going forward? No. Odds are it won't happen for awhile to that degree. Saying we don't need fanseevice in xiv is also odd, because XIV is literally fanservice incarnate. It's an integral part of the game for better or worse. XIV has never been some super dark edgy game that's super serious all the time. Many claim ARR and HW were but replying these will show you that's not the case. The cast was just smaller.

[Deo14]

Sure there should be a balance there in terms of how SoL is handled but is 10 secs of ab staring really a point to make about it being used badly? It was there then it wasn't in a blink. Not every single scene in a game needs to to be important to the overarching story. Sometimes characters just have fun. FF games have always been this way.

If the rest of the story wasn't lacking, it would be fine. But what happened in patch really? We went on a 357th mission to get some aether, now with a dash of penguin genocide. Then we rode a dragon to another shard, just to fight Golbez, where we won, but actually didn't. End of a patch.

SoL is fine, but not when it's clear that it's there only as a filler. This is not a slice of life anime, this is supposed to be fantasy story, adding this kind of stuff should be done with low priority, you need to have decent story first. It really just comes of as an attempt to distract players from poor story.

[IkaraGreydancer]

If the rest of the story wasn't lacking, it would be fine. But what happened in patch really? We went on a 357th mission to get some aether, now with a dash of penguin genocide. Then we rode a dragon to another shard, just to fight Golbez, where we won, but actually didn't. End of a patch.

SoL is fine, but not when it's clear that it's there only as a filler. This is not a slice of life anime, this is supposed to be fantasy story, adding this kind of stuff should be done with low priority, you need to have decent story first. It really just comes of as an attempt to distract players from poor story.

Is that really all that happened? I guess we gloss over more of Golbez' and Zeros back story. The alliance Garl now has that will allow them to rebuild their nation without compromising themselves. The creation of Zeromus? Like you can't purposely leave very key story beats out to make a point, that doesn't breed a fair discussion especially with the point you're making.

How can one of the shortest scenes in the patch be filler? And even if it was that little segment lasted no time so why is that even a point? Last I checked Fantasy can incorporate anything, slice of life included. You say it should be done with low priority but it was factually the shortest part of the patch...if you honestly think this scene is there to "cover up" a poor story that makes little sense. If that were the case wouldn't it be far longer? "Hey guys we have a 3 hour story segment we'd like you guys to play but we're gonna stick a 30 second scene in to cover up how bad the other 2 hours and 59 minutes are". Come on now...

And the story being good, bad, decent etc is purely just opinion.

[Deo14]

Is that really all that happened? I guess we gloss over more of Golbez' and Zeros back story. The alliance Garl now has that will allow them to rebuild their nation without compromising themselves. The creation of Zeromus? Like you can't purposely leave very key story beats out to make a point, that doesn't breed a fair discussion especially with the point you're making.

How can one of the shortest scenes in the patch be filler? And even if it was that little segment lasted no time so why is that even a point? Last I checked Fantasy can incorporate anything, slice of life included. You say it should be done with low priority but it was factually the shortest part of the patch...if you honestly think this scene is there to "cover up" a poor story that makes little sense. If that were the case wouldn't it be far longer? "Hey guys we have a 3 hour story segment we'd like you guys to play but we're gonna stick a 30 second scene in to cover up how bad the other 2 hours and 59 minutes are". Come on now...

And the story being good, bad, decent etc is purely just opinion.

After reading Decay's/Gauis' reply, I realized that I completely forgot that we also did some stuff in Garlemald. That's on me, I start to fall asleep whenever anything related to Garlemald and/or politics comes in a story. Creation of Zeromus? Cool I guess, no clue who that is, supposedly someone that players who played 30 years old game are hyped about. Sorry I left key story beats, but I unironically forgot we did some stuff in Garlemald, and I don't even know who this Zeromus is, from my POV, it's just another potential boss.

Just because something is short, doesn't mean that it cannot be filler. We already had that Radz-at-Han restaurant scene (filler #1), which certainly wasn't just 10 seconds, Estinien scene (filler #2), everything surrounding Aetherfont (filler #3), which took 30+ minutes, where only relevant info was that letter foreshadowing, then it was some Garlemald stuff, which I don't want to rate, because I understand some people don't mind or even like it. After all of that, we finally got to the Golbez stuff, where we got blue balled.

I certainly don't claim they intentionally made that Estinien scene to cover up poor story, but it certainly worked like that - all the Estinien fangirls/fanboys were hyped about that scene specifically, which made it feel like some cheap fanservice.

For me personally, whole patch felt like 3/4 filler, and rest was very mid. Up to a point where I started to believe that whole storyline was originally meant as EW's trial storyline

[TheDecay]

If the rest of the story wasn't lacking, it would be fine. But what happened in patch really? We went on a 357th mission to get some aether, now with a dash of penguin genocide. Then we rode a dragon to another shard, just to fight Golbez, where we won, but actually didn't. End of a patch.

SoL is fine, but not when it's clear that it's there only as a filler. This is not a slice of life anime, this is supposed to be fantasy story, adding this kind of stuff should be done with low priority, you need to have decent story first. It really just comes of as an attempt to distract players from poor story.

And when they do try to write a decent story, they quickly undercut their own efforts by wrapping up any semblance of conflict with "the power of being nice" and "the power of friendship" in a single minute after the person in question talks about their life story to us unprompted while we stare and do the WoL nod. And then they miraculously change their worldview to suit ours - no buildup or anything. The story has become profoundly unserious and baby-ish. It's like reading a child's picture book.

As a result, the Garlemald senator storyline, which took nearly half an hour, was as unserious and childish as filler like Zero looking at Estinien's abs. The latter is a symptom of how disrespectful the writers are towards the playerbase, and the former really shows how the story has been warped to resemble a Wattpad fanfic. I suspect they worry that if they allowed the Garlemald senators to continue opposing us, half the playerbase will be upset and get depressed like a child who can't handle someone disagreeing with them, even in fiction. That, or they don't want to bother coming up with intricate plot threads anymore.

[IkaraGreydancer]

And when they do try to write a decent story, they quickly undercut their own efforts by wrapping up any semblance of conflict with "the power of being nice" and "the power of friendship" in a single minute after the person in question talks about their life story to us unprompted while we stare and do the WoL nod. And then they miraculously change their worldview to suit ours - no buildup or anything. The story has become profoundly unserious and baby-ish. It's like reading a child's picture book.

As a result, the Garlemald senator storyline, which took nearly half an hour, was as unserious and childish as filler like Zero looking at Estinien's abs. The latter is a symptom of how disrespectful the writers are towards the playerbase, and the former really shows how the story has been warped to resemble a Wattpad fanfic. I suspect they worry that if they allowed the Garlemald senators to continue opposing us, half the playerbase will be upset and get depressed like a child who can't handle someone disagreeing with them, even in fiction. That, or they don't want to bother coming up with intricate plot threads anymore.

If the senators continued opposing us it'd just drag dude. They aren't in a position to be tight asses. And to lay it out like they just "miraculously changed their world view" with 0 build up is false. Did you miss the whole of EW? Prior expansions? They're only on these terms now because an alliance came with it that will help them rebuild. But again, you guys keep dismissing key story points to make a point...either you're not paying attention n so you're missing alot or your purposely framing the story to make it look worse. The people being afraid of activating the Tower again didn't spell "childish and unserious". Nor does the plight of Golbez, Zero, the 13th or Vrtra.

And then ofc classic shots at the playerbase but has the nerve to call your opinion "humble". We can't have discussions in good merits if you're gonna misrepresent the game and take shots at folks.