I feel like people are too harsh on Endwalker, though...

[Yuella]

I agree. Endwalker is a fantastic expansion.

[Souljacker]

That's actually the moment I started to hate him.

He is this awesome hero who travels the world alone and he has no idea how to deal with situations like that?

That was just out of character and bad writing.

Sure he must not be perfect and should have flaws. But keep it reasonable.

I thought it humanized him more than anything. He's good at fighting, flying through the air and lancing dragons, why would we think he's a shrewd businessman? Most of the time he's saving the world and getting free meals\rations\training with troops\sleeping barracks\etc.

Would we expect Lord Lolorito to be able to perform the feats that Estinien did? I wouldn't, he's not a fighter, he's a trader. He could spot a bad deal a yalm away. Being good at that doesn't mean it would be bad writing to depict him as bad at something else that might be peripheral to his trading, like say, defending the goods.

I thought it totally made sense that Estinien might not be so good at spotting bad deals.

[WillIrishclover]

I thought it humanized him more than anything. He's good at fighting, flying through the air and lancing dragons, why would we think he's a shrewd businessman? Most of the time he's saving the world and getting free meals\rations\training with troops\sleeping barracks\etc.

Would we expect Lord Lolorito to be able to perform the feats that Estinien did? I wouldn't, he's not a fighter, he's a trader. He could spot a bad deal a yalm away. Being good at that doesn't mean it would be bad writing to depict him as bad at something else that might be peripheral to his trading, like say, defending the goods.

I thought it totally made sense that Estinien might not be so good at spotting bad deals.

I headcanon Estinien as being on the spectrum, his special interests are fighting, collecting spears, etc, he isn't in his element in social situations, (which of course does not mean he can't socialise he of course can), so the whole scene in the market made perfect sense to me. Ask him to track,hunt and kill a monster, he's your man, he's gonna talk to you for days about his specific strategy he has, he's gonna deep dive you into his special interest about the best way to kill a dragon but ask him to haggle at a marketplace thats another matter which he wouldn't be accustomed to *in my headcanon*

[Xeronia]

Honestly Endwalker was lacking just kind of all over with odd choices on content like Island Sanctuary and the lack of rewards for criterion dungeons. I found myself more then once comparing it to what Warlords of Draenor was like way back in the day and that expansion made me leave WoW for an extended period of time due to how isolating it felt as an experience on the content end. It had nothing to keep people around and thus my friend pool largely diminished and the story just isn't good enough to keep me interested especially after I found myself with several misgivings about how 6.0 was presented and told. I still have two people that I log in for but overall I would say Endwalker greatly diminished my enjoyment of the game as a whole. I haven't even mentioned how my main class got obliterated into simplicity or how frankly easy former "grindy" goals became compared to prior expansions (All max levels jobs for example is a breeze thanks to how much exp is abound).

Overall I hope to see improvement in Dawntrail but I am not holding my breath on that one.

[OlafQuintessa]

To be honest, I think people aren't harsh enough about Endwalker. Obviously Covid and a producer that was stretched thin between projects took its toll.

The MSQ was messy and all over the place. Thank goodness it didn't drag on for two expansions! It was nowhere near the quality of previous expansions, even ARR and fetching cheese was better. I was interested to find out what caused the end of the world for the Ancients, but bitterly disappointed to find out it was all because they got curious about the universe. Expelled from paradise for being curious - the ultimate stay in your lane story! There were some flashes of greatness in the msq I suppose - Urianger's meeting with Moen's parents was a beautiful scene, and the desperate Garleans harked back to our first encounter with the Domans, which was quite moving. All the power of friendship stuff was tiresome though and the biggest eyeroll of all - fanservice Zenos at the end. I think the patch quests were better. Zero was intriguing at first, although that turned out to be a power of friendship story all over again.

The other major disappointment was Criterion dungeons. A great opportunity to introduce a midcore challenge for smaller groups, but instead we got a normal and two savage difficulties instead. There really was no midcore content at all. It's not surprising so many people drifted away. The relic was a very boring tomestone grind too - couldn't we at least need to do Variants? Or go do some old content or something different?

It all got off on the wrong foot with that two week delay (another disappointment for idiots like me who took time off) and never really recovered (remember the lottery bug too?). The launch of the OCE servers somewhat made up for things - a very generous move from SE and I thank them for that (my main is on Ravana). Otherwise, I can't wait to see Dawntrail on the headers and title screens so I can forget Endwalker ever happened.

[Souljacker]

All the power of friendship stuff was tiresome though and the biggest eyeroll of all - fanservice Zenos at the end. I think the patch quests were better. Zero was intriguing at first, although that turned out to be a power of friendship story all over again.
...
Otherwise, I can't wait to see Dawntrail on the headers and title screens so I can forget Endwalker ever happened.

I agree, but I overlooked it so hard because we are starved for new "Scions". I'm really starting to get tired of the old team, we lost members that never got replenished, Zero and the Satrap were most welcome additions to the trust pool (even though we probably won't get to keep them). I didn't appreciate the railroading they did, either - why bother asking me which Scions we should go get if you were going to make the decision for me? And then to add insult to injury, have Alisaie yell at me about it all the while I'm screaming at the screen "you were literally my first choice!"

Not to mention, every time the twins are off screen for an extended period of time, I always harbor the hope they will finally grow up. And every time, I'm disappointed. I don't care how long-lived elezen are, this pair should be fully grown by now.

*sigh*. I, too, just want to forget this Shadowbringers DLC ever happened. I feel like it's given me so many negative views of the game.

[Supersnow845]

It really feels like they accidentally struck gold with 4.3->5.3 then tried to force EW to be “ShB 2.0” without realising that ShB worked because it was fully self contained in norvrandt and they could build the first’s lore up to work within the story, when they tried to replicate it on the source they ran into pesky lore conflicts from 1.0–>4.3 and most of them just got resolved in a terrible way

[Carin-Eri]

i think the "impact" was lessened because until Bahamut's wings burst forth from Dalamud we had absolutely no idea (I think) about what was going to happen so it was a big shock.

Whereas for the Final Days we had already witnessed a preview via the Shadowbringers storyline so we knew what to expect when it started happening.

True enough in terms of viewing it from a R/L perspective.

However, in lore, I feel that something everyone in the story referred to as "The Final Days" should've been more 'apocalyptic' than an event referred to as a 'calamity'.
Because in terms of the impact on Eorzea itself it does seem that the Dalamud/Bahamut calamity left more damage, had a greater (negative) impact, and left longer-term consequences then the so-called 'final days'.

[PercibelTheren]

I don't think Endwalker is *that* bad. I don't even think it's bad. I think it's mediocre. The problem with that is that this game has shown me that it can do better than that with Heavensward and Shadowbringers, at least when it comes to storytelling.

[Kennar]

I liked a lot about Endwalker, but I definitely have my criticisms. I think EW can best be summed up as "good ideas, poorly executed." Varient/Criterion Dungeons and Island Sanctuary as examples--things that I like conceptually, but fell short in practice.

EW's main scenario was a jumbled mess with poor pacing and too much reliance on convenience and happenstance to advance the plot. The story up to 6.0 had gotten so big and unwieldy, and I have the feeling the writers just wanted to wrap everything up in a hurry so they could move on to something new. There were a lot of loose, unconnected threads that needed to be tied up, and there wasn't a good way to do it without a dose of "because the plot needs it to happen." There were plenty of moments of high drama and tension, but too often they were undercut by a sudden shift in tone or someone coming to the rescue in the nick of time. Events that should have had long-lasting impacts ended up being hand-waved away. I also feel that the heavier themes that story revolved around required the WoL to have a personality and a voice, and the insistence that our characters remain more-or-less a blank slate had a negative impact on the narrative.

I don't like time skips in general, but I think a three-year (or so) jump into Dawntrail would be a good way to firmly put the previous story to bed so the new story can take shape without the baggage of the past (I have the opening CS planned out in my head and it's great, lol). I don't like the intro to DT we got in 6.5, so 7.0 had better really impress right out of the gate.