Spoiler-ful advice to SE's Writing Team for Future Content.

[Fatestorm]

Stop killing off your entire cast of characters.

You are allowed to have a large cast of characters. There is no limit.

You are allowed to make the stakes high without killing your characters.

This is a video game, not a comic book.

That is all.

[HaelseMikiro]

I think the death toll of named characters for 4 years (earth time) of constant war with primals, garleans and dragons is actually at a reasonable level.
Moenbryda was a very short lived plot device used to give us an Ascian killing tool, show us that even Urianger can get embarrassed, and then do a lame asspull with "oh look, she left us a second crystal without saying anything, let's kill another Ascian".
Haurchefant went from minor side character to Best Bro Forever. As sad as his death was, it allowed for a tremendous amount of character growth in numerous others, and we may see those effects grow even greater in the future.
Ysayle had a splendid redemption arc spanning half the expansion, sad to see her go but I really can't imagine what else they could have done with her character by leaving her alive. Join the Scions? Start an orphanage for heretics? It's technically still a bad thing for Hydaelen every time she transforms.
Hydrus was a pure villain and his death would have been on our hands eventually anyways. Maybe we could sympathize with him for being the only humane Garlean officer ever, but his motives were (without question) to screw us over in the long run.
That last guy to recently die ..... I never saw a corpse, and this is SE we're talking about. Anything's possible.

[Airget]

Ya if anything I think the only trope I'd like them to refrain from using is introducing a fairly new character and quickly killing them off. it's fine if they take part in the overall plot like 1 and 2 spoilers but with Moenbryda, her "plot device" was a bit lame, to introduce her just for her to die.

[MisterLucie]

Or at the very least when they do "kill" a character and make a huge, emotional moment out of it... don't just cheapen it and miraculously bring them right back.

"oh jk she was sleepin lolz"

[Berethos]

Stop killing off your entire cast of characters.

You are allowed to have a large cast of characters. There is no limit.

You are allowed to make the stakes high without killing your characters.

That's generally what they've been doing - killing off characters is a surprisingly uncommon event.

In fact, one of the criticisms of the 3.0 story, according to some anyway, is that they didn't kill off enough characters (especially after making it seem like we were going to lose some far earlier than any that we actually have).

I mean, I'd get the complaint if we kept having to learn a bunch of new faces every few story beats, but much of the cast is still around and we've even added to the ranks.

[Chiramu]

If they were killing off characters then the sultana would've died. I think that was my greatest HW disappointment, wish they didn't write that out .

Was surprised for a Lalafell to pass on in the story however, but it was necessary for Lyse to become stronger for SB.

[Berethos]

Or at the very least when they do "kill" a character and make a huge, emotional moment out of it... don't just cheapen it and miraculously bring them right back.

"oh jk she was sleepin lolz"

Yeah - I get that they were going for in that story arc, that the Monetarists are much more in control than people thought, and it serves as a kind of break down moment for Raubahn as he goes from hell-bent on revenge to giving in for her sake...which will give the upcoming events involving him in Stormblood more dramatic weight (moments like after Baelsar's Wall and his look of resigned determination)...

But I don't think they sold what they were going for particularly well - instead of being all about this political intrigue and the fall and rise of the Bull of Ala Mhigo it comes across as a cheap "gotcha" at our expense.

[Shougun]

While I like the Sultana I was actually getting psyched for her to die.. I was like OMG YES THE CHAOS.. Ul'dah in flames! A new marketboard aetheryte! THIS IS GOING TO BE GR--- wait.. what!? Pfft. "yay my queen lived.. woopie.." lol

I thought Ul'dah was going to have a really center plot.. I hope they don't always move to a new area and a new area and a new area - never to revist the momentum of older areas (I understand focus moving forward, just don't forget about the old stuff either ).

Also I don't like people living too long, so I'm cool with all the death - to me it's important that you don't always know the death is coming though, makes it have a greater impact when it's actually a shock and not "lol, token chocobo".

They should definitely be concerned with expectation though, so I'm not suggesting every expansion be utter darkness.. and that's all we know from here till the end, but please don't "stop killing characters".

[Brannigan]

Stop killing off your villains after giving them barely enough screentime to register them as mildly interesting. For example

-Gaius' whole crew sans Nero. Even in 1.x, Gaius was underdeveloped compared to Nael. Gaius in 2.x has like two interactions with the player before he's dead.
-Hydrus. Dumb death. Felt forced because of the separation between MSQ and primal quests this expansion. He, at least, has more interaction with the player than others, but it still felt like it wasn't that much.
-Pope died at the end of Heavensward. Nidhogg took a while. We didn't really encounter them more than a couple of times each. The Heavens' Ward clearly had some personalities based on their in-battle dialog. Unfortunately we only interact with like three of them for the entire expansion. I guess we hate spear-of-light-thrower guy because he's kind of a dick and killed our buddy.
-Various ascians like Nabriales and that-chick-who-fused-with-Lahabrea.
-Warriors of Darkness - l o l

At least Elidibus is still alive. Lahabrea had a good run, too. To be fair, they do this with good guys as well - it was painfully obvious that scarface was going to disappear at the end of the terrible Alexander storyline and "special eye" catguy was going to go away at the end of CT. Sky Pirate man didn't disappear, but he's not really that important of a character in the grand scheme of things. Did Caith Sith go away? I don't even remember.

Their most developed villains have been Nael van Darnus (rip) and Nero. Nero's working with us right now, which is good, cause I bet he's gonna go rogue (again) in the expansion. Uh, if he didn't already. I don't remember if I finished the MSQ or not.

[Yoshiyuki]

I don't like that the main emotional currency video game writers lean on involves killing off characters. Whenever I start to care about a character in a game, especially this one, I have to curb my investment because they're probably going to die. Or, if there is a big conflict, like with Ul'dah in 2.55, I have to remember that MMOs need to "continue" at all times even for players who aren't caught up in the MSQ, so they couldn't just have the city go up in flames. Things are too scripted; they also have to face the constraints from feedback that the quests were too long, so they pared down quests and streamlined them.

I doubt that the writers have as much freedom as, say, novelists who can do their own thing creatively, since they need to have things set in stone several patches ahead of time. I wish the creative leads overseeing the writers could stray away from these tropes entirely. There are more compelling and intelligent emotional beats to hit instead of killing people off or giving the illusion of mass murders and backstabbing for the sake of drama.