Shifting and Concerning Moods Regarding the Writing

[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.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

Who is this "most"? Can you definitively prove that's the opinion held by most players? Or is it just most players in you personally know?

Personally what I've grown apathetic of is the whole everything with Ascians, Ancients, Garleans, and Allagans. Had the plot of Endwalker been extended into two expansions instead of the one, we would have had to suffer through Zenos for FOUR expansions when he should have died at the end of the base Stormblood. Y'all criticize the Scion cast for staying the same and not dying when they should've while the villains have the same problem. Going to a faraway place without a conflict started by the same usual suspects, in an aesthetic and cultures that are usually ignored in most Euro-centric fantasy is going to be a refreshing break.

This fresh start in a new place with nothing to do with anything else is what this story needs. All the ex-Garlean lands need a break before we come to them for them to be interesting. Otherwise it's just going to be Stormblood 2 with the same themes and the same types of conflicts.

I don't disagree that the cast should've been refreshed and that at the very least the 1.0 Scions Thancred, Y'shtola, and Urianger should've retired for the younger ones like G'raha, the twins, Estinien, and Krile to take over with the addition of new Tural characters to fill out the old slots. But they seem to have made their decision about turning them into main characters a while ago, which I can understand even if I don't prefer it.


Also, Meracydia never was and shall never be your European castles and knights fantasy. It's been described since 1.0 as a place with witch doctors and West African cultural items. And over the years has included North African fauna and cultural items as well as kangaroos and koalas for some reason. Other than that we're told it's mostly a wasteland with violently xenophobic inhabitants. I personally think we're going there in Dawntrail based on the cloud shapes on the world map shown to us but I don't think it's going to be anything you like.