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

[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.