Endwalker was "meh" (for reasons other than technical issues)

[Jandor]

Honestly, I thought everything up till Zodiark was near enough perfect.

The 2nd half is good, and jam packed with cool stuff, but I don't think it flows anywhere near as well. It also has the most scenes that I would tweak.

Ultima Thule and the Dead Ends are awesome enough to carry it for me though. I do wish I could change the zone music back to the muffled lyric-less version of the song though, the song is good and all, but I can already tell that having that dude non stop belting that track out is going to get real old real fast.

[Kisshu]

One thing I found kinda odd, is that after stepping into the final dungeon till the end of the trial, it's near identical in style to Shadowbringer.

1: The dungeon is a history tour, narrated by the villain. (Final days / doomed civilizations)
2: At the end of the dungeon, the villain starts picking off the Scions with spells in a cutscene.
3: Someone comes to the WoL's aid (G'raha / Shinryu)
4: Trial is against a wall boss (Hades did have a non-wall boss phase) with some similar attack patterns (middle/sides)
5: A fade to black after the ultimate attack and a power-up after that, going into a simple final phase.

[Kolsykol]

I dunno wtf it is with this forum, it's so negative lol.

I genuinely don't believe that most people here talking about the story even pay attention to it or they even skipped it.
I am biased cuz MNK but especially with characters like Lyse and how people unironically think that she didn't grow as a character and people don't even understand or remember stuff that was explained ( like how Flow works ) and then hate on events in the story based on not understanding.
Even tho it's literally spelled out multiple times.

[van_arn]

One thing I found kinda odd, is that after stepping into the final dungeon till the end of the trial, it's near identical in style to Shadowbringer.

1: The dungeon is a history tour, narrated by the villain. (Final days / doomed civilizations)
2: At the end of the dungeon, the villain starts picking off the Scions with spells in a cutscene.
3: Someone comes to the WoL's aid (G'raha / Shinryu)
4: Trial is against a wall boss (Hades did have a non-wall boss phase) with some similar attack patterns (middle/sides)
5: A fade to black after the ultimate attack and a power-up after that, going into a simple final phase.

I mean, I can't fault SE for copying the structure of one of their most beloved expansions. I can't say I'd want them to do this every expansion, but Square's MO has always been to double down on what players respond to positively.

They likely went so hard on zone music this time because of La Hee, for example.

[Jybril]

Too little time? This is the largest expansion in MMO history in terms of cutscenes and length. Hell if anything I thought they over did it on the size.

Because everything was all pushed into one patch. So the pacing was off like it was in SB.
Some things probably needed some more time to be fleshed out and not tied up in one patch
instead they should did it all within this expansions lifetime.
I said it before in another topic, but they made this same mistake in SB and they did it again here.

[Johaandr]

I may have missed the part about how Yshtola, Urianger and tanchred got to the moon? They did use the teleport thing right?
If so instead of making Ragnarok why couldnt people escape to the moon via teleporter thing we used to get to the moon???

[Ririta]

I may have missed the part about how Yshtola, Urianger and tanchred got to the moon? They did use the teleport thing right?
If so instead of making Ragnarok why couldnt people escape to the moon via teleporter thing we used to get to the moon???

Supposedly it was the first plan, but then it was avoided so refugees didn't see Garlemald's destruction as they would be distressed and maybe turn.

[Brandedblade]

I may have missed the part about how Yshtola, Urianger and tanchred got to the moon? They did use the teleport thing right?
If so instead of making Ragnarok why couldnt people escape to the moon via teleporter thing we used to get to the moon???

That's exactly why we had to save all those Thavnarians in Garlemald, they attempted to take the teleporter there but all the destruction and despair caused them to get assaulted by blasphemies.

[Deceptus]

Huge Amounts of Pointless Time Sinks
Endwalker introduced a lot of mechanics that were completely pointless and did nothing to further the story but instead just dragged out the number of hours of "gameplay" in this expansion. These include the "guide this NPC around" quests, "stalk this NPC" quests, and "follow this NPC" quests. I realize that iterations of these mechanics have been present in quests in past expansions, but it felt like there were numerous of these quests in every single zone in Endwalker. Normally, you could just mount up and run over to the next spot, or even use the aetheryte. However, in Endwalker, you now have to stick with a slow NPC and walk/run across the map on foot as part of the MSQ. I think the best example of this is when you're body-swapped in Garlemald and, at the end of that quest, you literally have to crawl across part of the map before you finally trigger the cutscene. "Gameplay" like this was tedious, unnecessary, and not "fun" whatsoever (mainly because it was so easy that it was almost impossible to fail any of these quests). It didn't feel like I was playing a game, but rather doing a chore. I'm not sure why SE decided to suddenly add a bunch of crappy mechanics like this.

Endwalker also saw an increase of the Eulmore-type areas (e.g., the Garlean subway camp and Radz-at-Han) where you're annoyingly prevented from attuning to the aetheryte. This made a little bit of sense with the Garlean subway camp from a story perspective, but not Radz-at-Han, where you almost immediately come into the good graces of the folks in charge.

SE has also added new "achievements" like mounts and fashion pieces that effectively require you to do 4,000+ FATEs each. How about instead of creating rewards that incentivize people to do hundreds of hours of mind-numbingly boring content (which is what FATE grinding is), SE actually comes up with some fun, new content?

This entire section is extremely blatant. This isn't a Korean MMO, achievements with thousands of requirement shouldn't exist here.

I feel the same way about the S rank mount. It's insane.

[Sathona]

I may have missed the part about how Yshtola, Urianger and tanchred got to the moon? They did use the teleport thing right?
If so instead of making Ragnarok why couldnt people escape to the moon via teleporter thing we used to get to the moon???

They tried but the final days reached garlemald around the same time and people started to turn or die by the Blasphemies so Fourchenault and the others moved back to Sharlayan for the original plan