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

[Eisi]

It's one of the most frustrating elements of the game as a former lore enthusiast. When I was more deeply invested in the setting I would take the time to do every side quest and even pay attention to the little scraps of lore that you would see in FATE's and item descriptions. It was my belief that it would all ultimately tie together as something consistent.

What I recommend you do if you want to enjoy the game as it is is that you look for the scraps of inspirational greatness that is often hidden in the most unassuming of places within the game. If you want a cohesive whole, forget it, there's too many writers on board with contradictory sentiments who can't be as raw and personal as they would be with private projects. I remember another poster talk about how there might have been issues with one writer deciding to kill of characters that another one previously introduced with perhaps originally other plans for them which might have led to a sense of animosity within staff. Unfortunately such issues can only be addressed via raw communication that often will lay bare the very foundations of one's passions as a writer, foundations that may radically contradict each other's and that are only with great difficulty woven together into a cohesive mural. Especially when you write for a brand with a priori restrictions and have to deal with executive meddling on top of that.

Perhaps it was originally the intention before the game was hijacked by the venue and modbeast crowd. The game is certainly catering to them more and more blatantly these days, both in terms of emotes, housing furniture and a lack of meaningful stakes for characters who seem to exist as little more than body pillows who gush over how amazing the player character supposedly is.

There is an overlap between venue goers and story enjoyers, but let me assure you that your image of them is out of touch. These are often people who are invested in or even personally write stories (fanfiction often, sure) that number 1) do romance at all which XIV it seems will not touch with a five yard stick even though it's one of the greatest topics to write about ever and basically part of FF's DNA, number 2) do tragedy way better than XIV itself and that number 3) really dive deep into the complex, often dark psychology of their characters. There's a lot of meme-worthy junk around for sure, but don't underestimate the taste of venue-goers. These people know that you can still gush over fictional characters even if you can't romance them in the game or if they are in a relationship with another character - just look at fan-favorite Ameliance. No, the fact that none of the characters in our immediate vicinity have anything going on is because of the writer's idiocy, not your fellow player's.

It's that it's almost impossible to have a good story given the circumstances that an MMO finds itself in, even when it allegedly focuses on telling a story. You are lucky if you strike gold once. XIV did it twice, once with the Seventh Umbral Calamity plotline, once with Shadowbringers. There are countless little examples to be found as well. Focus on those if you want to enjoy the story.

As another example, look at what happened to FFVII's lore when it got infinitely expanded across the Compilation of FFVII. It became an absolute mess.