*SPOILERS* Terrified for the remaining Scions!

[Vahlnir]

Who hurt you people?

I don’t know, I kind of respect that FFXIV seems to understand a social compact that is lost these days: Escapist media fails at its job when it feels the need to provide more trauma.

Both of your perspectives are valid, which is part of why I’m worried because I can see and understand them… all while hoping the devs continue to respect said aforementioned social compact: “you keep me in mostly happy feels, I keep paying you.”

I'm not asking for Game of Thrones here, but there does need to be some actual consequences for actions taken. So yeah, some characters need to die (and stay dead) to keep things interesting and impactful. Also, trauma? Come on now. That's a whole other issue that we or the devs can't help with.

[Theodric]

I'm not asking for Game of Thrones here, but there does need to be some actual consequences for actions taken. So yeah, some characters need to die (and stay dead) to keep things interesting and impactful. Also, trauma? Come on now. That's a whole other issue that we can't help with.

At least one major protagonist per expansion in my opinion.

Ideally someone who is fairly important rather than a throwaway character specifically created to be killed off in the same patch/expansion that they're introduced in.

It's a fair compromise - and allows for new characters to gradually be weaved into the story. After all, the cast is becoming very bloated and we've already seen some major characters reduced to only showing up as a brief cameo standing around at a meeting table with no actual dialogue.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I just don’t see how you can get any satisfaction from a story that has had dark themes, and expect purely happy feels. We’re literally going to be in an actual apocalypse next expansion, the same type of apocalypse that almost killed the planet before. If we come out unscathed from that, i’ll happily take my leave from the game. I really hope the devs write what they want to write and don’t give in to the small portion of the playerbase that gets all sensitive when characters die. A good story has consequences for both the protagonists and the antagonists. It’s why past final fantasy games have done so well.

[Jojoya]

The frequent near misses are making it more and more difficult to stay interested in characters that have been given such heavy plot armor. Even our own character's plot armor gets annoying at times (even if it's necessary to give us a reason to keep playing).

We've known for a couple of expansions that one of the Scion's is effectively knocking at death's door. I doubt SE would have bothered drawing attention to it if the intent wasn't for that specific door to open at some point (as opposed to the other door that keeps opening).

Some players are speculating that certain other Scions may on the chopping block due to similarities with other FF games.

Allowing them all to survive would be just as unrealistic as killing them all off. This is a war, after all, and we're going to be pushing behind enemy lines. Things happen.

Who hurt you people?

I don’t know, I kind of respect that FFXIV seems to understand a social compact that is lost these days: Escapist media fails at its job when it feels the need to provide more trauma.

Both of your perspectives are valid, which is part of why I’m worried because I can see and understand them… all while hoping the devs continue to respect said aforementioned social compact: “you keep me in mostly happy feels, I keep paying you.”

Characters can still die while we stay in "mostly happy feels". It depends on how the death was handled.

The "escapist" part is already covered through our own character. We know that our character can't die because that would effectively end the game.

[LisSquid]

Who hurt you people?

Mostly SE with their insistence that death only matters if the character is introduced in the same patch they die in. Every moment where they try to build tension is just lost now with just how often they resurrect characters.

[LisSquid]

Lack of stakes? I don't understand.

What about when Tesleen was horrifically turned into a sin eater?

death only matters if the character is introduced in the same patch they die in.

They kill off so many characters they introduce for the expressed purpose of emotional impact that I have stopped paying attention to new faces until they've been around for a while. They use "death" of the scions too many times for the same reason. Y'shtola is kind of a meme with this.

There are no stakes because you already know who the canon fodder is before they load the lead.

[Tsiron]

Who hurt you people?

my reaction reading this thread...

[Vahlnir]

my reaction reading this thread...

I'll stand by my requests/opinions, but they are minor annoyances at best.

[Theodric]

Variety is the spice of life. A game that constantly needs to treat its - supposedly mostly adult - player base with kids gloves becomes stale rather quickly. Final Fantasy games have never shied away from consequences, so hopefully FFXIV starts returning to its roots instead of encasing even minor characters in ridiculous levels of plot armour. That aside, the game introduced itself as a fairly gritty world with danger around every corner. ARR and HW reflected that and had a decent amount of consequences for both the protagonists and the antagonists. Expansions after that moved to only ever inflicting meaningful losses on the antagonists - and even then, two of the three major antagonists in the story ended up inflicting not a single on screen death on anyone - not even minor characters.

It isn't very compelling to me - or many others, based on the feedback that I've seen.

Not everybody is looking for 'escapism' at any rate. I want an interesting story with reasonably high stakes.

[ItMe]

Final Fantasy games have never shied away from consequences, so hopefully FFXIV starts returning to its roots instead of encasing even minor characters in ridiculous levels of plot armour.

I don't know what "roots" you mean. With a few notable exceptions

mainly Aerith

Final Fantasy games generally don't kill off main characters or party members. Even in FF4

everyone that died either faked it or comes back to life by the end.

This is is MMO, but the Scions are written and regarded as if they are party members. And even if one were to try and dispute that they can't argue the Scions are main characters.
We shouldn't be surprised they're not going anywhere.