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

[Bright-Flower]

In fact, given all but one of the Meteia were already launched and the one left behind was struggling (and failing) to not get corrupted via their group think, even if we just walked up and murdered Hermes the moment we arrived in Elpis, it would already be too late to stop what was coming.

(Sorry for double post can't find edit post option on mobile)

[Vyrerus]

This is not true.

You're confused. Chains of Promathia and Rise of the Zilart are separate stories in their entirety until the very end. They have associated lore and a tied together ending, but the "tied together" ending is more or less just having RoTZ done as a Prerequisite check so that Apocalypse Nigh's battlefield can be accessed (so that the Archduke and his brother are dead and can come out of the crystal line to fight you). You can do all of Chains of Promathia before Rise of the Zilart, and their storylines intersect in no discernable fashion outside of Apocalypse Nigh. They were also written by completely different writing teams.

When I say uplift the weaker story, I mean give players a reason to finish it completely. A very common thing that happened with FFXI storylines is that players disregarded them entirely even when current, because they offered few rewards. RoTZ had the oddity that the big reward from it comes from an optional 18 man version of Zilart Mission 14 -Ark Angels. The battlefield's name is Divine Might, and you receive one of five unique earrings if you do the 18 man fight against all 5 Ark Angels at once. At this point, most players stop, since you have full access to Tu'lia (Sky), and don't get any rewards from ZM15 or 16.

Then along came Chains of Promathia. At the very end of Chains of Promathia, you get a quest called Storms of Fate where you fight Bahamut in an 18 man fight that probably never really needed a full compliment of 18, but why not bring more muscle than you need? You gotta fight him, because he asserts that the Keeper of the Apocalypse could still manifest. Anyway, after that, your progress is halted until you beat RoTZ.

All that RoTZ supplies is the bad guys to fight and the damsel to be saved(returned from death). Narratively, all of this, "tie together" is from CoP, not RoTZ. And in some ways it doesn't even make sense, because the Zilart Princes are back and teamed up with no animosity towards one another, even though Eald'narche killed Kam'lanaut. (And for that matter, the Shadowlord comes back with no animosity towards either of them, in spite of his soul being trapped in Dynamis).

It would have been very easy for them, and made more sense even, to just have us fight another version of Promathia. Instead, they opted to gate this quest's access behind completing RoTZ. It's barely a tie together at all, relying entirely on CoP's narrative with the RoTZ cast merely showing up with no prior association or interaction with the CoP cast. Edit: And I forgot to mention that this fight has a reward earring similar to the ZM14 ones as the carrot on a stick.

It's like you didn't pay attention to it at all. Or maybe watched a Let's Play and read the cliff notes.

[MikkoAkure]

You're confused.

It's been well over a decade since I played but from what I remember:

CoP continued building on the same whole thing RotZ was on. As mentioned, they can be done separately and you can do Promyvion at level 30 or so from what I remember (also remember having to do that 40 times) but CoP is still built on top of the stories that came before it and is a part of the main story of the setting. You travel to Taznavia from the original opening (or at least see it from a distance and go to the shelter), the musical motifs are from the main song of FFXI (Distant Worlds) that is also present in some past vanilla FFXI cutscene music, Zilart and Kuluu characters are present in both, we travel to the Zilart capital referenced in RotZ, and eventually deal with the cosmic struggle and ancients and long-ago history of the game's setting.

The characters came and went unlike the Scions, but you had the Kuluu Nag'Molada and the Zilart woman with the scouter device whose name I forgot in early CoP quests despite the whole thing about their races being told in the previous expansion. Also pretty sure the Zilart priestess of Altana was in both as well. Yeah, they can be done out of order and I personally played them partially out of order because I was slow at leveling in the game and despite starting the game a few months after NA PS2 release, I hadn't made it to Sky by the time CoP came out and I wanted to get to Taznavia ASAP. But they were very clearly meant to be done sequentially since CoP built off of RotZ more than other expansions built off any other expansions and the story would be stronger had you done them in order. And again, I was there and I remember nothing at all about RotZ being a "weaker expansion" that required to be "uplifted" by CoP.

[Dulcia]

sure it wasn't her only option no she could've told the convocation hermes did a major f up an that they needed to prepare for meteion's assault but this would then have made our timeline not exist or would forever alter it which she just couldn't bring herself to do if you were in that position it would be hard for you to make a choice as well could you sacrifice all the lives of a future just to save your own present? i doubt you could carry such a weight on your shoulders knowing you murdered an entire timeline for selfish self preservation thats not even a guaranteed safety net but potentially a downward spiral cause even if they had stopped meteion well a certain someone's wife was plotting something equally worse.

I highly recommend the Video Essay from Youtuber Echoes of Etheirys and their video "Venat: Why She Failed (Full Series)" as it explains extremely elegantly why the Elpis plotline was the weakest part of Endwalkers and directly refutes all of your arguments.

[AnimalsALot]

I liked Endwalker

What exactly are the problems? XD

[Vyrerus]

The Ancients - clearing up some lingering misconceptions

EoE's final Endwalker was bad video, I think? Kinda sad, but hey, time for Yawntrail in a couple days.

Been a pleasure arguing in circles with all of you o/

[Wildheaven182]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

Well hey, the devs spent a lot of money developing the world in Elpis, the devroom. But some of the ancient developers didn't have their ideas implemented or their creatures were not approved and so were trashed. The developer Hermes couldn't stand treating their creations so flippantly. And then the players didn't even like the 1.0 game. He looked to other games and saw many which also failed and flopped.
The devs split over the 1.0 world, those who wanted to maintain it and couldn't accept its failure, and our lord and savior Venat-p who made the ultimate sacrifice to bring about a realm reborn. Many of the original devs were purged, but some of those who remained still harbored feelings of resentment and a desire to bring back 1.0- the Ascians.

Also yeah if you thought the primals were anything more than a pile of aether, hydaelin and zodiark and even the 12 were also just a pile of aether but with a person as a dumpster.

[SkankyRoe]

This thread aged well