More Story like 7.2 Please!

[Cilia]

... [A]t the time of the patches, Fandaniel wasn't looked on very fondly, whereas now he's considered maybe the breakout character of the Endwalker leadup and story arc. In the Shadowbringers patches, before he got his whole story, he was seen as a bit of a thinly-written clown.

...but here's the thing even less people remember: so was Emet-Selch during Stormblood's patches.

... ish. The initial response to Emet-Selch was a bit lukewarm, but by no means dismissive. On the one hand you had the people curious about the meaning behind his words and actions, and on the other you had the people who wanted their anti-Hydaelyn views vindicated. He provided both by the end of Shadowbringers MSQ (5.0) on top of a significant amount of pathos, which is why he's so fondly remembered (if you ask me).

Fandaniel (Hermes / Amon) actually got something of a negative reception, at least on this forum (where I engage in most discussions about this game). I like him, and I'm sure other people do, but that's on account of my understanding his depression and feelings of "otherness" because of it (I have a personality disorder); dedicated fans of the Ancients did not like him for exposing flaws in their supposedly utopian civilization.

I'm sorry, but the only thing the Warrior of Light does across all of 7.2 is walk into traps and fight robots.

In a role reversal from 7.0, we spent a lot of time talking and bonding with the "real" Sphene. Combine that with her being surprisingly well written in contrast to what else has come out of Dawntrail and the spotlight being on her and the Player Character, and it's no surprise 7.2's gotten a warmer reception. Having the NPCs talk to us instead of being almost a nonentity is a huge improvement and no doubt contributed to Sphene's instant popularity; it works pretty well, as both Emet-Selch and Exarch G'raha demonstrated.

(Even "Simulant" Sphene is more interested in the PC than her "frail, fleshy" counterpart on account of having the key Calyx needs, the latter of whom virtually ignores his ostensible Queen.)

[Cleretic]

Fandaniel (Hermes / Amon) actually got something of a negative reception, at least on this forum (where I engage in most discussions about this game). I like him, and I'm sure other people do, but that's on account of my understanding his depression and feelings of "otherness" because of it (I have a personality disorder); dedicated fans of the Ancients did not like him for exposing flaws in their supposedly utopian civilization.

Yeah, there's your problem: this forum is a deeply unrepresentative corner of the game's community, to the point where it's a laughing stock in other places. It's sort of an internet-wide thing; 'the official forums for a thing' have been generally considered to be one of the worst places to discuss said thing since... I want to say the early 2010s? Right around when Reddit and Discord really got rolling, and made community-run spaces a lot easier to find and maintain.

In fact, Endwalker made these forums' difference form the central community abundantly clear, and Fandaniel was one of the clearest ways to see it: he was really popular overall, to the point where the developers actually got surprised--paraphrasing an interview here, they were going for 'complicated but people will like him more than don't', but were shooting for a 60/40 split; they feel like the result was somewhere around 80/20. He did well in community polls I can find from the time, too; he was always the least popular Ancient, but that's mostly because Emet, Hyth, and Venat (who is the absolute clearest example of what I'm talking about) were overwhelmingly dominant. Hermes, meanwhile, was instead beating Alphinaud and Urianger; far from a slouch.

In that case I'd broadly put that down to the fact that most 'dedicated fans of the Ancients' aren't actually the sorts of fans that you've seen here, that were moralizing about it and claiming objective goods and evils far from what the game put forward; that's actually a vast minority of that community. Most Ancient fans just see them as people in a story they like; in their case, a grand tragedy. Hermes and Venat aren't hated for destroying paradise; they're beloved for being very big parts of that story, being tragic figures in their own right.

[thegreatonemal]

Yeah, there's your problem: this forum is a deeply unrepresentative corner of the game's community, to the point where it's a laughing stock in other places. It's sort of an internet-wide thing; 'the official forums for a thing' have been generally considered to be one of the worst places to discuss said thing since... I want to say the early 2010s? Right around when Reddit and Discord really got rolling, and made community-run spaces a lot easier to find and maintain.

In fact, Endwalker made these forums' difference form the central community abundantly clear, and Fandaniel was one of the clearest ways to see it: he was really popular overall, to the point where the developers actually got surprised--paraphrasing an interview here, they were going for 'complicated but people will like him more than don't', but were shooting for a 60/40 split; they feel like the result was somewhere around 80/20. He did well in community polls I can find from the time, too; he was always the least popular Ancient, but that's mostly because Emet, Hyth, and Venat (who is the absolute clearest example of what I'm talking about) were overwhelmingly dominant. Hermes, meanwhile, was instead beating Alphinaud and Urianger; far from a slouch.

In that case I'd broadly put that down to the fact that most 'dedicated fans of the Ancients' aren't actually the sorts of fans that you've seen here, that were moralizing about it and claiming objective goods and evils far from what the game put forward; that's actually a vast minority of that community. Most Ancient fans just see them as people in a story they like; in their case, a grand tragedy. Hermes and Venat aren't hated for destroying paradise; they're beloved for being very big parts of that story, being tragic figures in their own right.

The general fourm is a laughing stock not this particular sub. Sadly reddit is a really bad place to discuss the lore as most people really don't pay attention to the story or skip unvoiced cutscenes among other things. Thier dislike of Hermes echoes the things said here and comes from simply not reading.

[Cleretic]

The general fourm is a laughing stock not this particular sub. Sadly reddit is a really bad place to discuss the lore as most people really don't pay attention to the story or skip unvoiced cutscenes among other things. Thier dislike of Hermes echoes the things said here and comes from simply not reading.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. In all honesty I'm mainly here because, while other parts of the game do have generally taken-seriously, solid central community hubs (i.e. high-end gameplay has The Balance, crafting has Teamcraft), there just... isn't a similar place for lore and story discussion. That space never really solidified, so this subforum is one of the only places you can air and hear extended thoughts about that stuff, even if it's a poor place for it.

And yeah, I believe I did at one point describe the core problems of that sort of discussion here and in Reddit as 'overthinking vs. underthinking'. Here, you'll find someone who hasn't realized they're three degrees deep into their own speculation and have a completely insane long-shot take as a result. Meanwhile over on Reddit you'll see someone ask 'is the WoL a dragon' because they played one Dragoon quest and barely read any of it.