Shifting and Concerning Moods Regarding the Writing

[kaynide]

I'll start off with the obvious, the problem is that this thread is coming from you. You're a known dissatisfied element so the usual suspects are going to brush you off.

So, I’d say I’m probably in the group that disagrees with like 99% of the whining complaints, but OP does have good points that are worth engaging in (for me) from time to time. This is a pretty legit concern I think across the board though, and there are many people dissatisfied with the direction of the game from Endwalker.

I mean, I’m not in the everyone hates the game/sky is falling camp, but sure- game kinda sucks this expansion.

Also, a lot of what Theodric said. They really could/should have taken an entire expansion to focus on the void. Even the gods really deserved more mystery/story than what we got.

They could have easily made Endwalker a “the world has changed, and now we have to figure out how to deal with that” story. If they had spent the entire 6.x series on sorting out Garlemald and reconciliation I would have been satisfied. The story of the void felt very disconnected to what the void had been built up to be (Diabolos/void Ark/etc)…but it is what it is.

I mean, we could have gotten at least a void-centric expedition zone a la Eureka/Bozja.

[Alec97]

You're free to have your own take but this is getting into real head canon territory. The whole story line of FF14 has been pretty explicit that "gods" are constructs of faith/willpower and aether, they only take embodiments because living believers think they should, they ARE just a form of (powerful) summons. The FF14 universe is pretty scientific and mechanical, it's not some spiritual take on religions from Earth's history even when it uses references like Greek myths to anchor the player's engagement with something familiar.

It's not head cannon when it's fundamental theological metaphysics that applies to the real world. The primal while, yes, being constructs of aether are physical manifestations of said being in the world. You are separating the method of its summoning and the actual idea it's being summoned from, which is a genuine god; therefore, you are stating it's not the real thing when it's a distinction without a difference. The primal is the manifestation of the divine brought about through the worship of its followers, aka prayers and holy rights. These primals act like the god, convert in the name of the god and want to expand their sacred doctrine as all religions and gods do.

No final fantasy is not scientific in any way. It's occult. Even the most scientific aspects of the universe are magical. You are conflating a hard magic system that you see almost nothing of and that of science, which isn't the case.

When I use references to European mythology, the vast majority is a copy-and-paste job from said mythology. For example, in Celtic myth, if you want to bring forth a god of nature to receive its blessing, you will need to build it a vessel and perform copious amounts of human sacrifice, usually that of another tribe or the Romans invading your land. It's called a wicker man and was used to summon the Green man or father of the forest. The same happens in almost every other European pagan religion, and many of them cross over into each other. Ff14 isn't original and is heavily archetypal in how it portrays its characters
Aether, for god's sake, is just ripped out of Greek mythology wholesale as it's the fifth element that ancients believed made up the natural world and is otherwise known as spirit or ego, aka the soul.

So if they are very powerful summons, then the question is of what, and the answer is of course a god brought about by faith and prayer, which is made up of the material of the soul itself.

[Lunaxia]

The main issue...

I actually agree with the first part of your post, but those swipes are just too irresistible not to take, huh?

There is a section of the community that was unsatisified with the writing surrounding the Ancients and the way they were dealt with, sure, but unfortunately you can't pass this one onto us. Garlemald, Allag and the Void were written off as Ascian projects prior to the end of Shadowbringers, and I don't know how the Twelve, if meant as anything at all, would be perceived as anything other than a tribute to Venat and her faction. Really though, it's just another swing and a miss from the writing team that stems from their consistent attempts to wrap up all of 2.0's story arcs, but keep fighting the good fight.

(Kind of amusing how often "pretty characters" gets thrown around to make light of what we say, though - seems to be more of a you thing than anything the discussions have been saying. I guess Hythlodaeus does something for you?)

[aveyond-dreams]

Y'shtola is a walking deus ex machina and has greatly outstayed her welcome. She seems to know literally everything, including things that are out of her field of expertise. Nothing in 6.x felt high stakes, exciting, or a mystery because you knew that Y'shtola would walk in with some groundbreaking technology that would save the day.

When I call Y’shtola the worst female character in the entire Final Fantasy franchise I don’t feel like that is an exaggeration at all. She represents a failure to establish not only a basis from which she can reasonably grow as a character, but the subsequent failure to attempt any growth or semblance of at an arc at all. She quite literally is just a walking lore explanation device that was more rude than sassy a few times and suddenly some elements of the playerbase managed to invent a personality around that moment that is hardly reflected in the game at all – due to her primary function being the aforementioned walking lore device.

I think I can count on one hand the number of well-fleshed out main female cast members that CBU3 has produced: Ysayle and Ryne. All others have suffered from either impossible personalities or lack of growth, and unfortunately characters like Jill in FFXVI are affected by this as well. They are characters that do not make me sympathize or feel anything for them or their struggles. And a creature like Y’shtola has no real struggles, not when she can die and come back every expansion like it’s nothing.

This seems to sort of take away the others that have been important to this. She may have come up with some of the ideas but she's hardly the one that made them a reality. The Atomos portal? Thanvairian Alchemists. Her only hand in that was getting access to the original research to take back. The revised warding scale? Garlond Ironworks. Zodiark's brands? She was helped by the watcher and the Loporrits. The items used in the latest one? Garlond Ironworks. The way of using the Crystal Towere? G'raha. She has grand ideas based on a scholar level intellect and knowledge foundation, but she's hardly a Deus Ex Machina if she requires soooo much help to make them a reality.

Yes. Scholars galore. And their response to this oversaturation of that archetype in this game is to introduce yet another scholar with Krile’s likely addition to the main party in 7.0 while retaining all the other ones that the WoL is shackled to. What could possibly go wrong? It’s not as if people have been complaining about being bored of them or anything.

Man are we already to the point of writing off Dawntrail as filler? How the mighty have fallen.

Which makes one question why follow up the Filler MSQ arc with yet another Filler MSQ arc.

I mean how do they do it. They butcher the Voidsent AND Twelve story arcs with lackluster content and storytelling in one expansion...............post patches..............and not even all of em.

Part of me feels like Yoshi P. just wanted to watch the remnants of what was established going back to 1.0 burn with the rest of this expansion.

My view is that it fundamentally cheapens the world state when key elements of the setting are erased like the Hell or Demon Realm equivalent, especially when done in the WoL-messiah way that the current writing has embraced. Along with getting rid of the gods as well. This doesn’t come across as any kind of empowering or uplifting story to me, it bores me to think of the thought of so much magic being stripped from FFXIV’s setting after the end of other more interesting elements like the Ancients plotline, etc.

It really has reached WoW Shadowlands levels of too much cosmic nonsense, but the way to course correct was absolutely not to waste our time with a vacation episode expansion. It should have been to reground the story in a new home base, an Ilsabardian or Meracydian kingdom with the same strong fantasy elements that gave people something to catch their attention back in expansions like Heavensward or Shadowbringers.

By contrast, the reaction to this beach episode vibe has been complete and utter apathy from most with some players choosing to play defense saying things like their WoL needs a vacation – but as these same sort of players are generally averse to storytelling with significant consequences at all, as ultimately neither Endwalker nor its patches had much for the main cast, I am indifferent to their opinions. The WoL does not deserve a “break” after having so many victories handed to them on a silver platter while their allies get away without a scratch. Sorry.

Dawntrail is still quite a way off and if the expansion itself is filler then that means...another three years until the expansion after that. I don't think it's unreasonable, then, to raise an eyebrow in concern. I know that various posters - myself included - have politely requested more variety in terms of themes and characters to better cater to a broader variety of personal tastes. For as much as some really like the Scions, they're wearing rather thin for many others - incidentally even amongst some of those who like them. I know quite a few fans of G'raha, for instance, who would prefer that he acts less like a clingy fanboy of the player character and instead a bit more like the Crystal Exarch.

I do not want to wait until I’m almost or nearly 30 for FFXIV to get good again. And yeah it pretty much does feel like anyone who doesn’t like the worst cast in the entire franchise gets actively ignored if not punished by having those more interesting characters consequently removed from the story and then having no references to them or even store outfits. How much do you want to bet we will get yet another Scion outfit or even another levelling set recolor like they did with Ysayle’s put on to the online store before we get something like a Solus set? I’d have even considered purchasing a Zenos Shb Patch outfit, but not when the game is so stretched for content as it is now.

[Theodric]

(Kind of amusing how often "pretty characters" gets thrown around to make light of what we say, though - seems to be more of a you thing than anything the discussions have been saying. I guess Hythlodaeus does something for you?)

On that note, for practically all of Shadowbringers the Ancients were represented as shade-like beings and Emet-Selch, who is rather unconventional looking - especially for a character in a Final Fantasy game. It wasn't until Endwalker where we saw the Ancients in their original forms.

So the attempt to push it as people being fixated on the Ancients because they are 'pretty' is rather strange. It was the actual story surrounding Amaurot and its peaceful, Etheirys loving inhabitants that drew a lot of people's interest towards the Ancients. To say nothing of those of us who were already intrigued by them even before the Amaurot reveal.

It's also worth noting that the Ancients are the closest we've gotten in a while to the pure high fantasy aesthetic which also plays a large part in their popularity, I rather suspect.

[Zaniel]

It's not head cannon when it's fundamental theological metaphysics that applies to the real world. The primal while, yes, being constructs of aether are physical manifestations of said being in the world. You are separating the method of its summoning and the actual idea it's being summoned from, which is a genuine god; therefore, you are stating it's not the real thing when it's a distinction without a difference. The primal is the manifestation of the divine brought about through the worship of its followers, aka prayers and holy rights. These primals act like the god, convert in the name of the god and want to expand their sacred doctrine as all religions and gods do.

No final fantasy is not scientific in any way. It's occult. Even the most scientific aspects of the universe are magical. You are conflating a hard magic system that you see almost nothing of and that of science, which isn't the case.

When I use references to European mythology, the vast majority is a copy-and-paste job from said mythology. For example, in Celtic myth, if you want to bring forth a god of nature to receive its blessing, you will need to build it a vessel and perform copious amounts of human sacrifice, usually that of another tribe or the Romans invading your land. It's called a wicker man and was used to summon the Green man or father of the forest. The same happens in almost every other European pagan religion, and many of them cross over into each other. Ff14 isn't original and is heavily archetypal in how it portrays its characters
Aether, for god's sake, is just ripped out of Greek mythology wholesale as it's the fifth element that ancients believed made up the natural world and is otherwise known as spirit or ego, aka the soul.

So if they are very powerful summons, then the question is of what, and the answer is of course a god brought about by faith and prayer, which is made up of the material of the soul itself.

You're just super-imposing your fascination with religion/real life religious lore over the game world where in literally dozens of cases the writers/characters specifically state that eikons aren't gods, I dunno what to say if you want to ignore this. And yes, FF14 has an extremely hard/scientific magic/mythology system. Magic is the subject of scientific study, its measured by instruments and quantified in textbooks, aether may as well just be electricity or dark matter or whatever given the level to which it is analyzable, compare this to other magic systems in other settings which are entirely mystical or spiritual where magic comes from spirits or actually gifted by the gods. On a comparative scale FF14's magic system is EXTREMELY codified and is essentially an adjunct to science, ceruleum engines are used next to aether-burners not to mention all the magitek and Allagan magic technology, you really can't get more systemised.

[SieyaM]

Well then I don't get the hype for 5.0. Graha is the same person in ARR that he is in 5.0. Hell, he is the same person right now. Elidibus was doing his best Emet impression-- oh no not another sacrificial Ascian but with nostalgia bait slapped on. You can literally do this with anything. The writer of the reddit post is too incompetent to even hide their bias-- so because Zero has actual character development it is "predictable and boring". They can stfu. Zero is contemplative and well executed. Just because part of her journey is learning to rely on others doesn't make it Kingdom Hearts. The writer was trying to go deeper into what friends bring to you and your life aside from the very literal "they help you kill stuff".

Let's go talk to Graha for the 500th time about being on our next adventure while we are actively on the current adventure we brought him on while some sad old FF piano music plays.

I will take Zero any day of the week thanks.

I think the biggest problem with Zero's arc is that it wasn't anything profound or unique to her as a character. It is quite literally the standard I was all alone and sad and then I met friends and am no longer sad and will save the world arc.

[SieyaM]

The main issue that they've written themselves into from a lore standpoint is in tying all the pre-existing worldbuilding elements back to Amaurot, in a reflexive response to the accidental popularity of a few overvalued characters. Garlemald and Allag are just puppet states created under Emet-Selch's influence. The Void was the byproduct of the usual Ascian ignorance and malice. The Twelve are the remnants of Amaurotine souls.

There's a particularly obsessive and vocal section of this community that is fixated on Amaurot and its pretty characters, but there's no way to satisfy them anyways. The best solution is to write Amaurot out of the story and start fresh worldbuilding that isn't connected at all to it. Thankfully the coming expansion seems to be the start of this.

They can't really do that though, since Amaurotines are credited with creating everything that has ever existed in the world. No matter where we go or what we see it will have been the result of what they did, meaning any and everything is going to some how come back to Aumaurot and Elpis and Ancients. If the twelve really are as they say responsible for the stability of all of Etheirys then every culture should be aware of them in some capacity, since they would have been shaped by the prayers and devotion of everyone on the star, not just Eorzeans.

[Alec97]

You're just super-imposing your fascination with religion/real life religious lore over the game world where in literally dozens of cases the writers/characters specifically state that eikons aren't gods, I dunno what to say if you want to ignore this. And yes, FF14 has an extremely hard/scientific magic/mythology system. Magic is the subject of scientific study, its measured by instruments and quantified in textbooks, aether may as well just be electricity or dark matter or whatever given the level to which it is analyzable, compare this to other magic systems in other settings which are entirely mystical or spiritual where magic comes from spirits or actually gifted by the gods. On a comparative scale FF14's magic system is EXTREMELY codified and is essentially an adjunct to science, ceruleum engines are used next to aether-burners not to mention all the magitek and Allagan magic technology, you really can't get more systemised.

No I'm not nor did I say Eikons are gods, I said the summoning method is summoning a god and therefore it's a distinction without a difference. The word Eikon means representation. If I'm summoning the physical representation of a god I'm therefore summoning a god. If I chose to do it with a fork I would get a fork. It's that simple I don't need super impose anything on it.

What you are doing is saying that because the people in the setting can do summoning magic what they are summoning isn't a real representation of the idea which is false because they still manifesting the being in question it's just a matter of how limiting they are as individuals. The more powerful and intelligent the individual, the more flawless the representation of the idea will be.

Also no FF14s magic system isn't that codified you almost know nothing of how anything works, what you have done is take items which affect everyday peoples lives, weapons of war and resources with select properties and therefore you stating its really codified when the reality is you have no idea how any of it works because it's not important to the setting. In LOTR for example its magic system is soft and its even more detailed than FF14s is. However in Starwars for example it has an incredibly hard and rigid system with documentation on how almost everything functions from starships, shipyards, lightsaber parts, ideologies, species, their anatomy etc. Ff14s lore isn't really explained upon because it's not that important for you to know the minutia of how things operate.

Electricity is a form of aether in the setting because electricity as we know it doesn't exist because it's inherently magical in nature. Also, dark matter isn't provable yet even in our world so we don't even know if it exists, it could be completely made up. Science is derived from the scientific method to help us understand the natural world the setting is inherently different and therefore it doesn't exist. This world has aetherology and it is a source of academic study but it's not science and has very little in common with it philosophically because the rules of the world don't conform to ours. This is why I said it's closer to occultism because that's the closest real-world representation we have to it.

[Absimiliard]

No I'm not nor did I say Eikons are gods, I said the summoning method is summoning a god and therefore it's a destination without a difference. The word Eikon means representation. If I'm summoning the physical representation of a god I'm therefore summoning a god. If I chose to do it with a fork I would get a fork. It's that simple I don't need super impose anything on it.

What you are doing is saying that because the people in the setting can do summoning magic what they are summoning isn't a real representation of the idea wich is false because they still manafesting the being in question its just a matter of how limiting they are as individuals. The more powerful and intelligent the individual, the more flawless the representation of the idea will be.

A quick note here. The procedure for summoning eikons/primals/whatever you want to call them is confirmed to be a flawed form of creation magicks passed down by the Ascians. Individual representations of each primal vary widely one from the next not merely because they're being influenced by their summoners but also because they're quite literally being made anew with each incarnation. The belief systems of those carrying out the summonings do play a role in the end result, but they do not allow these creations to exceed the sum of their parts. In other words; no matter how hard people erroneously believe the thing they're conjuring is a god, the end result can never truly be a god.

A thing can possess the form of godliness without also wielding commensurate power and knowledge, as is the case with pretty much every primal to ever exist that wasn't named Zodiark. This is not a case of being limited by its summoners so much as it is a case of being limited by available aether and/or crystals. Prayer alone is not sufficient to conjure one of these things up, let alone grant it power.

Consequently, believing something is a god does not mean it's a god or even a proper representation of a god. It may be a god to you, but that in no way qualifies that entity as an actual deity. Or, put another way, summoning the representation of an idea or belief does not mean that representation is the real thing. The primal Garuda is just a creature that happens to carry the appearance and mannerisms of the Garuda believed in so fervently by the bird people, for example. That isn't Garuda, no matter how much the Ixal (and the primal Garuda itself) believe it is. There is no actual Garuda, and there never was. Like all primals, "Garuda" was born the first time she was summoned.