After Dawntrails abject Failure of a Story, there need to be serious Consequences

[Destati]

I'm afraid that there will be serious consequences, and said consequences will be the dev team taking the wrong things away from the feedback they've received. I see that they're trying to do new things this expansion and even though they aren't necessarily working, I don't want them to take it as a sign to dial it back and go back to the old (the Scions for example), but rather trying a different approach.

[AnotherPerson]

Had to shorten the quote for limits on posting, but...
Did we not see the havoc of what the Endsinger has done? To say Dynamis isn't that extreme would be ignoring the Final Days. And to add to this why others can fail (Haurchefant), again, we seen it in Endwalker. Dynamis can be good or bad. Putting faith into strength has always been FFXIV plot point, they just gave it a tangible name. The "power of friendship" trope seen in 90% of anime, that's basically Dynamis. Are we saying 90% of the shows who use this trope are considered bad writing? As for using limit break, the Scions have time and again were able to access limit break when you play them in solo duties, so again, if they can, why can't Wuk Lamat? Not to mention, the enemies can also access Dynamis (As we saw with Endsinger/Meteion), so yeah, it really depends on who's "feelings" are strongest in that moment.

And as a major G'raha fan, I disagree. The Endless need aether to sustain themselves indefinitely. Their aether reserves were diminishing. Yes, we could have let them "die" naturally once the reserves were done, but they explicitly stated that the Mesoterminal would not be able to be accessed unless the other terminals were shut down. How would they go about accessing the terminal then? I'm pretty sure if the dynamis beings on Ultima Thule were to go after their home planet, G'raha would be destroying them as well, even if he was conflicted, but they were ultimately harmless, so they let them be and tried to understand their circumstances.

As for the Levin sickness, the story is not over yet. Hell Alisaie didn't even do the Light-aspected aether sickness for Halric until the patch quests. Who's to say she won't help the levin sickness now that the dangers have passed? And as for the other things, again, the story isn't over yet. We still got the patch quests to see if the Scions try and help these issues.

You can edit the quote of your last post to capture the entirety of the message.

Endsinger has the ability to manipulate Dynamis far better than a regular person can by being an Entelechy who runs on Dynamis. Their very essence is heavily affected by the surrounding Dynamis. Meteion naturally has the ability to communicate through Dynamis, soar through Dynamis waves, etc.
And I'll have to repeat again, we fought Endsinger in an area that is aetherically lacking and dynamis is omnipresent over centuries and centuries of build-up. The Final Days isn't something that came out of thin air. It was the collective dynamis of many untold civilizations that Meteion visited before centuries of build-up. That's why it's immensely important to realize Thancred's role in Endwalker in the Final Zone, because whoever's feelings is strongest only matter in an unique zone where emotions dictate reality.

The same cannot be said of the races living in The Source. They have the ability to use Dynamis, but nowhere in any amount like the ones who are specialized in this, nor are they living in an area where emotions are the only factor. Being in an aetherically rich environment and being unable to manipulate aether is why Garleans were shunned and drove them to live in the frigid tundras in the first place. This is a world where aether has far more sway over dynamis where the former drowns out the latter in most instances. That's also why we ourselves need allies to be able to affect the surrounding Dynamis as heavily, because each person has a limited ability to pull the surrounding dynamis. That's why even solo quests that have LB (ex: Alphinaud's solo instance with NPCs fighting alongside him) has only one such use of Limit Break, and it's generally saved at a pivotal moment, not spammed wantonlessly. It's an phenomenon filled by a build-up of emotions, but that has limits as long as we're in The Source because this is an aetherically rich environment where dynamis takes time to gather back up. That's why the shroud of aether works for years to prevent the Final Days.

And no, The entirety of the scions would immediately address points they can do at that moment. There was not a hint of debate, no exhausting possibilities. They just nodded and moved on. That's as bad as a yes-man and cheerleader as you can get into the plot for someone who faced the conundrum on the right to existence, the impact of cloning technology, etc. Alisaie could not work on the Light-aspect aether sickness because they were trying to fix the flood (which is a far bigger problem at the time since they were on a crunch-time) AND because there isn't a known cure to a terminal illness. At the time, prevention is the best solution to the terminal illness, but we are repeatedly shown we cannot do anything for the people who ARE afflicted other than making their lives easier so they can die peacefully instead of of painfully turning into a sineater. In the face of impossibility, Alisaie did the unthinkable within the scant moments they had with the best academics who know the workings out the soul to make a solution and then eventually go on to mass producing the solution with the rest of the scions for all the other elements. They worked tirelessly to find a solution even when they were told it's not possible. When struck with the inefficiency of it all, they did not simply accept the result that only a few lives would be saved and continued to push forward. That's the difference between the old scions and the current expansion's scions.

We didn't have any problems with time until the events after Trial 2 finished. There was no reason not to cure the Levin Sickness then and there. It was such a cop out in writing, and it shows they were trying to save it for post patches to push a narrative forward.

The reason why we were told to go shut down other terminals is because it should help weaken Sphene's determination when there's no one left for her to save. Didn't do a thing when we learn that the Meso Terminal also has people's memories in there and THE MESO TERMINAL IS THE ONLY ONE WITH A FIREWALL???? So it's not like we had access to the Meso Terminal either. We still forced our way in at the end. It doesn't matter if their aether reserves are diminishing when the terminals themselves have the ability to just recycle less of them but preserve their memory when they reincarnate again. The reason why they were just not temporarily dismissed is because... of the plot? Because Cahciua said it has to be so after she gave up when Preservation no longer has any solution available? Did the writers just forget collaboration exist?

If anything, forcing Sphene to speed up her calculations in a bid of desperation to keep as many people alive by shutting off the terminals one by one just show Cahciua is more sociopathic than anything else. Kind of disturbing, really.

Dawntrail's second half is about accepting loss, and being unable to change things. It just wasn't shown well because we simply did not try to go out of our way and save them. They didn't even stop to reason to think about it. Maybe if we were actually able to visit The Golden City far earlier, discuss things with Sphene in the background, only for the final buildup to be "we can't change things, the most we can do is see people off", it would have been 1000x more depressing but people can accept that we did our best to try at that time. Unfortunately, nothing was done about it.

[ServerCollaps]

The HanuHanu not knowing about the powers of their own festival float, despite the festival being held regularily and the crops instantly having a huge, visible increase in growth.
Bakool Ja Ja not even being reprimanded for releasing Valigarmanda, still being able to compete for the throne like nothing happened. It's not even clear why he knows how to free the creature in the first place, or why he can openly be a criminal without nobody caring.
The cooking contest rewarding stones only to the winning team by definition, forcing confrontation between half the contestants down the line. Also expecting every contestant to take the same route despite not giving directions on where to go when.
The first dungeon being completely useless, seing how the boat catches up by the end anyways, so everyone could have just stuck together from the very start. No need to search for an alternate route on foot. (...)

you should not overthink anything that happens, lul
The birds are birds, they might just be stupid. The cooking contest got planned by the sleeping head, maybe he wasnt as wise as you would think or the other head messed up stuff, who knows.
You expect that everything works in a "perfect", most efficient way. Have you ever worked with people in rl? Plenty of them are dumb and do irrational stuff all the time. Its nice that they implemented that in a game

[honest_psycho]

The birds are birds, they might just be stupid.

I think this is the first time someone is actually racist against an in-game race, wow.

[Supersnow845]

you should not overthink anything that happens, lul
The birds are birds, they might just be stupid. The cooking contest got planned by the sleeping head, maybe he wasnt as wise as you would think or the other head messed up stuff, who knows.
You expect that everything works in a "perfect", most efficient way. Have you ever worked with people in rl? Plenty of them are dumb and do irrational stuff all the time. Its nice that they implemented that in a game

Creating plot convenience out of character stupidity is not good writing nor is it a representation of realistic stupidity in actual people

All the terrible hanu hanu plotline achieved was giving a convinient excuse for clueless wuk Lamat to get the right answer to a problem she was totally out of her depth fixing just so she wouldn’t fall terribly behind koana who actually knew what he was doing and came up with a proper solution to the problem using his innate talents

Something like post ARR Alphinaud is a good representation of idealistic stupidity, plot contrivances in DT are not

[NailBach]

While I'd prefer an actual 100% re-write of the MSQ, with a year long stop on development and free gametime like with 1.0 and ARR, I know this is not feasable.

not only is it not feasable, it‘s something completely different. Just because YOU don‘t like the story, everything should be redone? FF XIV 1.0 was a technical mess, it runs fine now. Stop clowning around.

[Coratanni]

A lot of Wuk Lamat's interaction with Sphene is about empathy, something a lot of the community doesn't understand, so I can see why a lot of people wouldn't be able to appreciate it. However, I dig when this game's focus is empathy.
I wouldn't expect any MMORPG with a lot of expansions to not have a poorly received one, or any game with a lot of DLC to not have a poorly received DLC. One part of it not being as good isn't going to necessarily put me off...

Oh we have lots of empathy. We also have real expectations. DT's story and characters were GARBAGE. I think my fanfiction writing over 3 decades ago had more consistency and less plotholes than what we got.

[Saraide]

Why is everyone so adamant about the entire hanu hanu not knowing about the magic of the float?

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

Your opinion doesn't exactly equal a fact. Even if there are many threads that say the same thing "the story is bad" is just an opinion. I doubt Square-Enix will ever officially admit "the story of DT was bad."
Personally, I don't think a re-write is warranted.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Why is everyone so adamant about the entire hanu hanu not knowing about the magic of the float?

That storyline really made no sense... Somehow every single one of the Hanuhanu forgot about the magic, but then there's Wuk Evu who knows all about it but just decided to never tell anyone about it and just lets them suffer.