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

[Dorito_Burrito]

If it was inevitable, it should be made to be believable that it was inevitable. Efforts outlined above should have been shown and defeated within the scene.

As it stands, the fact that Venat can precision materialize a second Argos to save the WoL from their fall means she could have materialized another Argos ahead of Meteion and caught her.

Cutscenes revolving around pivotal events shouldn't be careless. If we were wrapped in chains for the majority of the monologuing, that would be one thing, but we were not.

Argos can create a double of itself. Not only does Venat mention this herself, you literally see two of them in the same place after you battle her.

[Sayo_]

I truly did not like "In from the cold" both story wise or duty wise.

[Vyrerus]

Argos can create a double of itself. Not only does Venat mention this herself, you literally see two of them in the same place after you battle her.

Whether it's Argos doing it or not is immaterial. It was done on a split second to catch the WoL who fell, and thusly, could have been done at any other point, apparently anywhere Argos is directed to or decides to do it at.

[Dorito_Burrito]

Whether it's Argos doing it or not is immaterial. It was done on a split second to catch the WoL who fell, and thusly, could have been done at any other point, apparently anywhere Argos is directed to or decides to do it at.

I dunno. I just can't find the mid-air rescue all that contrived when we've seen Ancient magicks do precise things like pluck a specific person's soul from the Lifestream and conjure them the clothes they were wearing before they vanished, or recreate a whole city from memory and inhabit it with shades of the past, or erase memories from a very specific starting point. Mind you, all of this was done by unsundered Ancients like Venat, so I don't see why she's the one deserving of flack when she does it.

[Carin-Eri]

I truly did not like "In from the cold" both story wise or duty wise.

Same here. Whilst I gather it's generally a pretty popular part of the Endwalker story in most player's view, I hated it.

I absolutely detest countdown timers and in this case I'll admit, it stressed me out. I'd have been fine if the same scenario had occurred without that damned timer but as it was I failed it the first time making stupid mistakes that I wouldn't have otherwise made.

[vetch]

Damn, I missed dungeon rework discourse.

I'm an ardent defender of ARR's game design.
ARR always had the best dungeon design in the entire game, and frankly anyone who disagrees might as well praise Final Fantasy XIII level design.

I'll concede that the removal of some of the boss mechanics in the MSQ dungeons from ARR were unnecessary. But Copperbell only benefitted from the redesign. The layout is literally the same as before. They focused on changing the bosses.
The boss design in that dungeon was horrendous. Duty Support is not engaging, but a boss where the whole party spends 2/3 of the time waiting to take any action and a boss that involves waiting for the weak adds to slowly make their way to you only to die in 3 seconds each are even less engaging. Boss fights where half the party just stands around waiting are trash.
Even the last boss was trash. Or rather became trash, because for the past 2~3 expansions you never had to bother dealing with its original mechanic unless your party had miraculously bad dps.

No, the tuning of old Copperbell was what was horrendous. Your complaints are not about the design, but about the execution.

Bosses 1&3 didn't suck because they tried to overwhelm you with adds, but because the adds died too quickly or spawned too slowly to overwhelm even the worst of players. Add-pressure as a fight design is exciting when it's tuned correctly. Dusk Vigil Boss 2 is suffering somewhat from potency creep now but still does much better at this than old Copperbell did.

For the slime, asking players to do things besides 'tab-target the enemy and press your buttons to make it die' is great. Having to wait to take action because the things meant to keep you busy die instantly and the mechanism timer hasn't been updated to reflect that is not great.

Removing Copperbell's old, interesting fight designs and copy-pasting in some AoE-spam striking dummies instead of re-tuning for engagement was a loss.

[Vyrerus]

I dunno. I just can't find the mid-air rescue all that contrived when we've seen Ancient magicks do precise things like pluck a specific person's soul from the Lifestream and conjure them the clothes they were wearing before they vanished, or recreate a whole city from memory and inhabit it with shades of the past, or erase memories from a very specific starting point. Mind you, all of this was done by unsundered Ancients like Venat, so I don't see why she's the one deserving of flack when she does it.

You're not actually talking against my point, you know, right?

The point I made was that they have no shortage of competency and powers at their disposal, and so their failure to stop things was stupid. Even within the context of the scene.

i.e.

If Argos can spawn itself again into a mid-air rescue, then it could spawn itself ahead of itself and stop Meteion. Think, Catgirl. Think!

[Boblawblah]

If Argos can spawn itself again into a mid-air rescue, then it could spawn itself ahead of itself and stop Meteion. Think, Catgirl. Think!

But that didn't happen.

[Vyrerus]

But that didn't happen.

And it should have, and Meteion should have evaded the second Argos.

[ZavosEsperian]

I dunno. I just can't find the mid-air rescue all that contrived when we've seen Ancient magicks do precise things like pluck a specific person's soul from the Lifestream and conjure them the clothes they were wearing before they vanished, or recreate a whole city from memory and inhabit it with shades of the past, or erase memories from a very specific starting point. Mind you, all of this was done by unsundered Ancients like Venat, so I don't see why she's the one deserving of flack when she does it.

There are lots of contrived failures within the plot and usually, when they happen, it is to a character who should be able to overcome the issue at hand without much struggle. Venat failing to catch Meteion is one specific example that has long standing implications on the plot since catching Meteion would cause the plot to end right there unless Hermes had a few spare Meteia in his proverbial back pocket. Furthermore, it is likely the most egregious case of someone failing when they honestly shouldn't from the protagonists side of the story. I will list some of the other cases below since there are quite a few I can name off of the top of my head.

Some would argue the early loss against Ranjit in 5.0 was a case of contrived failure. Or, particularly more infuriating if you are a ranged class at the time, when Misija gives up control over Mikoto inside of the Bozja storyline, thereby opening themselves up to a ranged attack to neutralize her. Throwing Nidhogg's eyes off a bridge, while seemingly a good idea, ends up coming back haunt the protagonists later down the line. There are likely others, but none of these have the same consequences from contrived failure as what Venat's failure had.

To me, these sorts of devices cause more plot contrivances than not and they tend to come at the expense of the story as a whole since then clarification is likely needed to explain why character X couldn't do action Y. It isn't per say a fault of Venat herself, it is more of a fault of the writers.