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

[DevonEllwood]

This is the thread that got me to post on the forums again, so I figured it would be nice if it was also my last.

If it's any consolation, half the people in this thread have been asking themselves that same question for nearly two years now.

In about a month and a half-ish is my starting anniversary. So that's almost 10 years I felt I wasted getting invested in the story. I hate Endwalker, but I'm glad I do. It's liberating. last few patches? Skipped them. Recent new 24 man raid story? Skipped it. I have lost nothing from this and have only gained. I can spend that time doing things I actually want to in the game. I'll give Dawntrail a chance, but if at any point I feel it's a chore, I'll just hit that escape button.

I kept seeing people say to play other games if you're bored, but what if you don't play video games? I draw, watch videos, and play this game. My steam library consists of only a few games. I never used to play any. I spent time drawing and reading. So I took that advice and bout a game. I saw someone play it a bit, didn't understand what was going on, thought it at least looked neat, and bought it. Everything I asked for story and character wise is in this game and I wouldn't be playing it if I liked Endwalker.

I'm going to keep playing FFXIV, but it's probably just going to be barely. The developers aren't budging on the 2 minute meta, Yoshida told Mr.happy lolno when he asked if he was going to fix healers, and classes will continue to get reworks so just play for aesthetics. Until this game starts to seriously go under, I can't see them changing at all. I'm here fore collecting random stuff, pvp, fishing boat, and other random stuff. I like digital collections so I'll probably be here when the game crashes and burns.

If you are going to keep fighting, I'll keep cheering you on. I'll probably still be lurking, but not posting. good luck out there, and thank you Endwalker for being quite lackluster.

[ReynTime]

User A: Points out what they believe is a contradiction/inconsistency.
User B willingly confronts User A's comment: No it's not a contradiction
User A simply responds to defend his stance: Yes it is. Here's evidence. Where is yours?
User B refusing to admit they brought this upon themselves: Oh my gahd WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED about this.

But now? It gives us less, way less than ever before, and has given itself the complete liberty to discard everything that would give its story any impact.

Ascians? Gone.
Garlemald? Bastardized.
Stakes for our heroes and setting? 6 feet under.
Voidsent? Just people who gotta get their world right (by reverting it to how it was before :^)).
Zenos? Maybe dead, but where's the minion?

I've said this numerous times but for years it felt like Yoshida's team just wanted to get rid of everything built from the lore that preceded his era (1.0) to replace with their far more simplistic and less nuanced style of storytelling.
And I'll throw more to the list you started:

The Black Shroud's ever present fear of the Elementals? Gone because Calamity. Who cares if The Shroud had literally nothing going on since 2.0.
Piracy in La Noscea? Gone because moving speech and piracy bad.
Corruption and clashing factions in Thanalan? Gone because no one left in the writing team knows how to write it so all you get is "Lolorito bad but we need his help".
Dark past of Ul'dah? Sanitized.
Primal tempering? Gone, because magical flying pigs.

[Rufalus]

A sigh when jumping down into the dwelling of the 6.5 trial boss and we see it waiting for us at a square platform with line markings to help determine AOE boundaries. The fate of worlds must be determined in this kind of room specifically, again.

Remember when they tried experimenting with that big dragon at the gates of judgement outside ishgard. That long path instance with some towers we could climb vertically to release traps.

They really never wanted to experiment with the shape of rooms ever again huh. Nah just keep having bosses provide us square platforms to host our battles, even magically floating ones if necessary.

[ReynTime]

A sigh when jumping down into the dwelling of the 6.5 trial boss and we see it waiting for us at a square platform with line markings to help determine AOE boundaries. The fate of worlds must be determined in this kind of room specifically, again.

Remember when they tried experimenting with that big dragon at the gates of judgement outside ishgard. That long path instance with some towers we could climb vertically to release traps.

They really never wanted to experiment with the shape of rooms ever again huh. Nah just keep having bosses provide us square platforms to host our battles, even magically floating ones if necessary.

Not that I don't prefer more experimentation but the reason they backed off of that level of experimentation specifically was because the original state of Steps of Faith required a lot more coordination and environment interaction than the average MSQ duty, and as a result it would either take way too long or lead to wipes often.

[Supersnow845]

Not that I don't prefer more experimentation but the reason they backed off of that level of experimentation specifically was because the original state of Steps of Faith required a lot more coordination and environment interaction than the average MSQ duty, and as a result it would either take way too long or lead to wipes often.

I think his point here is that they made one mistake (which wasn’t even a mistake on the arena design which was good) and they have overcorrected for the last 10 years

Zermous had markings on its arena for AOE’s; eulogia has markings on her arena for menphina’s AOE’s, menphina has markings on her arena for the same AOE’s

Like can we tone it down a bit

[Renathras]

The patronising false concern...

It seems you're looking to be upset if you think that was "patronising false concern".

It was genuine concern, btw, because some people think that if you disagree with them, you hate them or look down on them. I don't. I get different people like different things. And I call BS on "No one likes to hate anything" - A LOT of people love to hate things.

If you don't like it, cool. But please don't use your negative opinion as a weapon to cast aspersions on other players' point of view because it conflicts with your own. How does it feel to be accused of doing something you didn't do? Maybe don't do that to others.

ALL I SAID was that I disagree.

That's it.

You had to post accusing me of being patronising, fake, and weaponizing positivity. Just because YOU disagree with me. Different people like different things. You didn't like it, I liked it. The end. If you aren't one of the people who loves to hate things, then that part of my post does not apply to you so you don't need to defend yourself. If you feel it applied to you, then maybe you're one of those people and exposing yourself. If you aren't one of those people, you don't have to reply saying you aren't, because I very specifically did NOT say that everyone who didn't enjoy it loves to hate FFXIV's story, now did I? You would fall under the group of "and I know others don't but simply have different tastes. And that's fine." people. So if you aren't one of the love to hate people, YOU didn't need to reply to me at all.

I actually considered unsubscribing today, and that's something I've never actually felt like doing. But I actually hovered my mouse over the option today.

This...is the kind of thing I don't understand.

I think a lot of people are trying to be upset over this, but it makes so little sense as a thing to be upset about unless someone's trying to find something. We already know that the souls weren't completely consumed. We know that with Zodiark because of Hythlodeus. We already knew that with Hydaelyn because of the Watcher. This is a thing I've seen SEVERAL people comment on, and I got to that part of the story and saw no issue with it.

The memories shared with us of their origins were not full of details or especially precise, so it doesn't violate the "hazy memory" issue, either.

The idea of religion giving people comfort is hardly new. And the dialogue with Halone even made specific mention of the difference between normal people using religion for comfort and strength vs the wicked men of different generations abusing it to harm others; a reverence to Ishgard and the Eorzian pope business. That, like everything in life, there are pros and cons, good and bad uses of them. There was no "all religion is good" implied by not outright castigating religion as bad.

Doing things as expected instead of subverting expectations for the hell of it is not some cardinal sin.

These are all really little things to be upset about, much less so upset you were shaking as you hovered a finger over the unsubscribe button. I'm not about telling people how to spend their money, but I just don't see how any of those things, individually OR together, would be upsetting to anyone who isn't looking for reasons to be upset. I just honestly can't get it. I don't get that upset about basically anything, much less a video game.

I don't get how this is difficult to understand.

Yeah, this. I'm not understanding the problem people are having here, especially having such a huge problem over it. If they were going to, they should have back in 6.0 when we first talked with the Watcher.

Zero: "As long as we work together, then we can do anything!"

Hold up! Wait a minute. What happened to forge ahead? This goes directly against the theme of Endwalker.

Uh...what?

The entire theme of Endwalker has been "as long as we work together, we can do anything". That's been the theme of the entire expansion. I know some people didn't like it, but did you sleepwalk through Ultima Thul? They made it pretty damn on the nose there and with the 6.0 capstone Trial.

Not to mention "we can do anything" IS forging ahead. Forging ahead means not being idle, not giving into despair. If that means recovering something long lost, that's still "forging ahead". This is that whole "not all change is progress" thing in a different way. Sometimes going back to something that was better is positive movement. Forge ahead no where says "divorcing oneself utterly from the past".

I cannot believe that you would insinuate that because I didn't like it that I either don't have the same tastes,

Ahem, not to put too fine a point on it but:

Are you saying you and I have identical tastes?

IDENTICAL tastes? That you and I have EXACTLY the same tastes?

Surely you aren't saying that, are you?

Also, believe it or not, a lot of people didn't like Shadowbringers story. Some people didn't like Heavenswards. As it turns out, people have different tastes, and this does, in fact, influence how they appraise things. Do you truly disagree with that statement?

As to the "Do you honestly think..." as I pointed out above, there wasn't a period after "hate things". There was a comma followed by ", and I know others don't but simply have different tastes. And that's fine." Did you not read the rest of the sentence? Or are you outing yourself as someone that does just like to hate things? Because if you aren't, you don't fall into that group. So why are you insisting you're part of that group? Or Insisting I'm insisting you are, when I didn't mention or reply to you personally, and when I left a huge open group of other people besides those who just like to hate? Why self-identify yourself as one who does if you aren't?

That said, I did keep going to Clyvia and Unu expecting some update to their dialogue and was a bit annoyed it didn't happen until the end (same with Gaia's cameo), but it wasn't make or break for me. Honestly, given it's side content, I was happy they actually referenced it at the end, implying they might go somewhere with it in the future.

"Don't you dare imply that I hate this just because I'm just a bitter person. I won't tolerate it." - I didn't imply you were.

YOU are implying you ARE.

My only major critique with the post EW story and Im sure almost all of you will agree on this take.

Is for the writers to never try to do a single narrative for post patch content again. It gets stale and padded out to quickly...

I don't think it has to, I just think it did in this case because 6.3 and 6.4 didn't really...move things along. It's like Kingdom Hearts 3, nothing significant happened between "go out and get stronger again" (end of Olympus, the first world), and "Sora goes to save Aqua". All the significant story happened before and after that. About 2/3rds of the game was just going to Disney worlds for the heck of it without having any bearing on the story other than Woody pulling a Gullum and telling Ansem that nobody likes him and he doesn't have any friends. 6.2 we got a dungeon where we met Zero and then killed two Fiends for the hell of it (powerful warriors, down in one single patch), and 6.4 didn't really...do anything. They could have put two of the fiends in the dungeon as the other bosses or something and had the viodgate open all in one patch. The whole "they were distracting us" was kinda just needless filler. And 6.4's Dungeon was super contrived (we have all this energy, but we won't share it...well, okay, we'll share it, but it's actually been overrun by monsters, so we aren't really in control of it anyway, but we're totally claiming possession of it even though 9/10ths of the law says the monsters possess it, but if you kill them for us, then we'll let you use the thing that YOU will effectively 9/10ths of the law at that point anyway...), and the Trial, while itself fine, the story after ended was a total "we have to run away because reasons but we'll be back in a few months because though we beat the bad guy in combat he's going to beat us in this cutscene, and oh no, he has an even more powerful friend all of a sudden we DEFINITELY have to run now, but we'll be back in 4 months!!!" needless padding for the sake of having 5 patches per expansion or something.

That I think was not well done.

But we also have other plotlines going this expansion, the problem is they don't come with the patches themselves. Tataru's quests are in the X.Y5 patches, so they don't feel as present, and the impacts thus far aren't particularly world-saving. But then, that's what people have said they want...lower stakes that aren't saving the world/universe. And the 8 man raids and 24 man raids were also parallel plots. The 8 man was pretty lore significant with some plot hooks like the Ultima connection, and the 24 man we didn't know if they were up to no good or being benign/benevolent in some way. People suspected the outcome, but people didn't know it.

So there wasn't just "a single narrative" this time, anyway.

Personally, I feel like 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4 should have been a single patch. OR, they should have been an X.0 expansion with buildup and the Fiends each leading armies as we dismantled them one by one, maybe the last two team up to make it really hard and we have to call on all our allies, then we take the fight to Golbez in the final Dungeon, only for him to summon Zeromus for the capstone Trial. But it was just too thin a gruel for 3 patches and 12 months, imo, but because they were patches instead of the X.0 story, they couldn't REALLY develop the Archfiends, the threat they were actually supposed to be, and we never saw much of their nor Golbez's "army". It was just too rushed to do the story justice, but at the same time, had stupid amounts of "and nothing of significance happened". It's like drinking coffee and taking a sleeping pill at the same time. It's trying to be grand, but also tie up the Saturday morning cartoon episode in under half an hour.

.

...see? I am negative on things sometimes. I'm just very sparing with my negativity and what I expend it on.

Not that I don't prefer more experimentation but the reason they backed off of that level of experimentation specifically was because the original state of Steps of Faith required a lot more coordination and environment interaction than the average MSQ duty, and as a result it would either take way too long or lead to wipes often.

Even before that.

Twintania in ARR.

The arena was Bahamut's hand, but because of it, there was that divot strategy people used for Divebomb (which was arguably too punishing a mechanic at the time, especially with Twisters later that made no sense to anyone and the people that got the first kill more lucked into figuring it out than anything from just trying things and seeing what kept them from dying). It was neat cinematic, but it led to an exploit. So they've been gunshy for 10 years, more or less, from that. Though I agree that Steps of Faith (and the Vigil with the giant turtle fight, Dusk?) was where it crashed head-on with MSQ and really doubled down on it.

Also, why am I telling you this? You're the great Inspector Hildbrand.

[Atelier-Bagur]

snip

Ive outlined what I meant in other posts but to reiterate I'm mainly focusing on the actual msq story. the 6.X story was just focused on one plot point rather than having additional plots to keep the narrative engaging. I also forgot to mention them trying to tie a trial series into it alongside using elements of FFIV for its plot killed much of the intrigue and mystery behind the story. The MSQ felt formulaic and it wasnt executed very well either. For starters we really should've focused on exploring more of the 13th and had more dungeons or even explorable areas tied to it rather than having only a single one. It would've helped build more lore into a dead world and allowed us to better care for the outcome of the 13th if we better connected to it. They also could've used that opportunity to allow Golbez and the Four Fiends come at us at every turn, rather than just mostly be in the background and help build more on his character, rather than do a WoW and slowly churn on cliffhangers. I always say that good stories come with villains with a lot of screen time. It's why people enjoy Emet-Selch so much because he was allowed to have the time and development needed for him to be interesting and compelling.

It should've been more of a journey through the void that progressed in a finale at Golbez's HQ. But yeah the whole 13th and Azdaja arc should've been a 2 patch story with 6.4 and 6.5 focusing more on better connecting us to our next adventure in Dawntrail.

[Theodric]

It's really weird how some posters like to enter a thread specifically for critical feedback and then question why critical feedback is being posted in said thread. Even stranger is the habit of pretending as if a thread of 859 pages and counting hasn't already had the posters frequenting the thread outline their positions and concerns a great many times already.

I think the simple fact that the following linked thread was made in response to an obvious bad faith comment ridiculing those posting here says it all:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...y-in-Dawntrail

I don't doubt that you're genuinely concerned that the forum is being used for its intended primary purpose of leaving feedback related to the game. I've also seen enough of your posts relating to lore discussions to know full well that you can be linked specific sources only to dismiss them only to double down on rhetoric such as this:

So I get how the idea of Venat NOT being a bad person is hard to take from people that had all but assumed their headcanon they came up with during ShB was that Venat was going to turn out to secretly be the Big Bad this whole time...and when the story said "No, she actually is/was a genuinely good person, just faced with horrible options", refused to accept that.

I DID say, as a "what-if"/"think about it this way" that the ANCIENTS were basically becoming Nazis. But unless you are one of the Ancients, that doesn't apply to you, now does it?

I don't get it, but I get some people want their anti-hero/shade of gray world, and that's fine. You can have that headcanon, and I shall leave you to it. Just don't accuse other people of living in headcanon, being "simps", etc, who refuse to subscribe to your own.

Thankfully pattern recognition is a thing and it's not difficult to note how often it turns out to be the case where the same posters who feign concern over the mere existence of critical feedback towards the story always turn out to have the most bad faith take on the Ancients/Garleans but readily bend over backwards to do damage control for Hydaelyn.

[Renathras]

Ive outlined...

Oh, I don't disagree: You can see my complaints. I think the big problem was that they didn't really spend the time to develop it - time they CLEARLY had considering they used that time for dithering, B plots that weren't really relative or important (to this day Rubicante "distracting" us seemed completely pointless), and a lot of unnecessary hat tipping and new eating emoting.

Clearly they had time to develop the characters a bit more, build them up as a bigger threat, etc. Yet they didn't. But it wasn't because they were rushed on runtime, since they had time to do all the other dithering. I get they wanted to use all of 6.2-6.5 on it, but if they were going to do that, they needed to flesh them out a lot more. As people have noted, they had those sidequests with the Hecteye to see the backstories. Why? We have the freakin' Echo FOR THAT PURPOSE all the time. It's a bit overused, but it's a totally right there for use plot device to do that. In Sorrows of Wyrlit, we got that backstory of the other characters, yet here, it was in a side quest.

It's just there were a lot of poor decisions from 6.2-6.4, and no really good reason for it.

That said, I think 6.1 was fine, and 6.5 was great. So... /shrug

It's really weird how some posters like to enter a thread specifically for critical feedback...

"What's the point with that quite lackluster X" is not "critical feedback". It's just deriding something.

Moreover, it's a free forum. You've posted in positive threads to bring down the mood. People are allowed to have and express opinions. And I have no issue with feedback, critical or otherwise. But when I don't agree with it, or have feedback of my own, I'm allowed to voice that, am I not?

Do you have a problem with people posting feedback on the forum if it's positive feedback? All the time people say "people who like things don't post, they just play the game", so what's wrong with someone posting about it for once? Do you oppose people leaving feedback on the forum that you disagree with? Because you seem more attacking me than my feedback here...

It's interesting to note how often it turns out to be the case where the same posters who feign concern over the mere existence of positive feedback towards the story always turn out to have the most bad faith take on Hydaelyn but readily bend over backwards to do damage control for the Ancients/Garleans.

Also, did you literally go back over a year to posts I made to try and ad hominem/strawman fallacy me? o.O Talk about bad faith!

[Nayukhuut]

The Twelve were just wasted on something that ended up being wholly inconsequential. I was rolling my eyes and laughing at how they seriously pulled out the predictable 'ur so amazing and they luv mortals liek u' trope. It's telling that the game ignores that the player character and their allies are not actually acting as authentic mortals given that they're frequently empowered by third party sources.

It's even worse than that. Not only what you say, but also we find out that once again it was a plot from Venat to help guide us and keep the mess she created from destroying itself. I did the quests with my sister, and there was much swearing on my end. Which, to her credit, she found hilarious. I have given up on this story applying its morals equally. Venat didn't want people to rely on Zodiark and wanted to give the new life a chance, so she wiped out ALL life and instilled herself and her creations as gods so we could rely on HER teachings instead. Why? Because it's not evil if Light Mommy says so. -_-

It wouldn't be nearly so bad if the story didn't keep treating her as a selfless hero, but it does. I wish I had more dialogue options to tell her actions off. I understand they won't lead anywhere, but it would be soothing at least.

Worst part, the end of the quest doesn't fix anything. We still have to pray energy to the machine they left otherwise Venat's mess still caves in on itself. What happens when people stop believing in gods? When will this story admit that Venat screwed everything up?

Whew, and that was my rant for the evening, sorry. Just so frustrated with the story. Tired of being told one thing as a base for morals, and then having other things play out.