Quote Originally Posted by Eorzean_username View Post
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.