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

[MikkoAkure]

I disagree with the idea that a story doesn't need death to be good. Some of the most iconic stories throughout human history have had stakes in the form of character death - including major protagonists. The aversion to both major and minor characters being at risk of dying strikes me as a recent thing and I don't think it's healthy for characters to be held hostage in such a manner.

It's reached the point where an actual apocalypse can occur and it's still pushed that such a dire threat isn't a good reason to kill off anyone important.

I'd say a healthy balance is needed. I'd care more about the protagonists if they weren't obviously going to walk away from even the most dire of threats bragging about lacking even a scratch to show for it. That isn't interesting to me. Especially if they do die only to come back five minutes later.

The vast majority of RPGs and even FF games don't have death among the major protagonists and aren't considered inferior games.

You claimed that FFXII is your favorite FF game but it has just 2 minor character deaths, 1 of whom turns out to be a traitor just before dying and the other turns out to have been looking to be redeemed in death for a long time having been originally on the antagonists' side and personally responsible for a city's destruction. Unless you're really going to count the random tutorial soldier in the first 10 minutes of the game who is only revealed to be less-than-random postmortem and wastes away off-screen. The end even has 2 major characters who "die" only to come back 5 minutes later.

Minor characters introduced in the expansions still have the capability of dying in FFXIV and I don't believe the game is shy about killing them off where applicable. But considering their staying power and the nature of the game as an MMO where practically all of them are entangled in unrelated side stories, I don't see any of the main cast being killed any time soon. Especially since the cast was codified in ShB after Papalymo's death and Lyse's depature.