Quote Originally Posted by Hallarem View Post
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_taiwan_2025/


Sure seems like a lot of PR speech again and more lies about them "implementing a lot of player suggestions" and pushing the dumb DT "vacation" angle.

Funniest part though is how the "Garlemald was never planned" people get finally silenced in this by, I quote:

"We planned to use 5.0 till 7.0 to end our decade-long Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc and bring everything to its climax. Originally, 6.0 was meant to focus on the Garlean Empire. However, 5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments."


I frigging knew Endwalker was a rushed smushed package to rush to the end. They should've taken their time and done it in two expansions. No wonder the pacing was so off.
"5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments" , when translated from Yoshida Speak, means "We were afraid if we went into a slower-paced, more thoughtful exploration of war, nationalism, and the consequences it has on people and the world that all these people that flooded in during ShB would get bored with 'Dr. Zhivago but in a Fantasy Land' and unsubscribe, so we speedran it to get to the HYPE EXCITING FINALE."

Well, I've been saying this for YEARS now, and looks like I was right. I knew from the moment that Zodiark was the very first trial that we were on a speedrun.

Clearly, the Moon was supposed to be the "mysterious unexpected last zone" and Zodiark was supposed to be the Final Boss of Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion. Which would lead into the Final Days being the patch storyline, leading up to What We Know as Endwalker. This would have given every plot element room to breathe. It explains why "The Telophoroi" are really just "Fandaniel and Zenos and some minions" instead of an actual cult who want to bring about Armageddon. It explains why the Telophoroi towers, which would have been a good way to reuse older zones and revisit them to fight Terminus monsters and topple the towers, kinda just... fall down, offscreen. By extension that explains why the Final Days mostly only happen in Thavnair - they were originally meant to be happening all over the world during the Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion patch cycle.

But instead, they were idiots and rushed it when it should have been a two-part finale. Almost all finales are better as a two-parter. Imagine what a rushed mess Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film would have been if they had tried to cram a massive final book into one movie. People make fun of how Peter Jackson's film version of The Return of the King has "6 different endings" but think of how many characters and plots would just have... not had a finish if they had rushed the ending. The finale of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica , "Daybreak", was a three-part finale, because there was so much to wrap up in the ending of the show - and it still is debated to this day on whether or not it truly succeeded.

If all the haters could put one dollar in the "We Were Right About Endwalker Being a Rush Job" jar, that would be nice, thank you.

Instead what Yoshida and co. did in their infinite wisdom was rush the ending to get all that leftover plot from 1.0 (which he has admitted he hated being saddled with) out of the way to get to the story he REALLY wanted to tell.Which was... Dawntrail, I guess. "Dawntrail is a vacation" , once again translating from Yoshida-ese, means "this is an excuse to make players pay us for the privelege of stalling for time while we come up with.... something for the future plot"

Which wouldn't have been necessary, btw, if they had just stuck to the plan. Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion > Endwalker would have given them plenty of time to figure out what to do next. Their spinning their wheels with DT wouldn't have even been neccessary if they had just stuck to their own plan.

Yeah, I think I would have rather had a thoughtful Garlemald expansion and been knee-deep in a better-written and not rushed Endwalker by this point, than the EW Rushjob and the Dawntrail Sloppa.