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

[Bright-Flower]

I agree with some of the issues. I see no reason why they couldn't have made 'walk with the npc' quests usable with mounts and aetherytes. You couldn't just boost their speed so they can keep up with a chocobo? Really?

The stealth quests were over used and sometimes didn't even make sense narratively. The one where you stalk Uriangr? When you finish it he's just like 'oh hey WOL want to chat while I spill my heart about what's troubling me?' There was NO REASON that had to be a stealth quest, he doesn't even act like you snuck up on him.

I disagree with the crawling in the bodyjack quest, I feel that specific quest was done very well. That quest was unique and interesting story wise, unlike the mostly boring 'follow the npc' stealth quests.

Ultima Thule could be a bit tedious because yeah, there was no way they were going to kill off all the Scions. This isn't Type 0 or Rogue 1. I didn't buy for a second they would be gone. However, I did enjoy the actual dialogue in those scenes as they confront the despair of the various people in Ultima Thule. And then I was in tears for the final walk hearing quotes from various characters throughout the game.

I think the attitude of the garleans, while they were incorrect, made perfect sense. Honestly I found it unintentionally hilarious when you meet with the city state leaders and they tell you that your first priority is to help the garlean people. That felt incredibly naive. Let's be real if Garlemald was not the epicenter of this Tower issue and the key to hopefully stopping it for everyone, they would not be sending this combined force into Garlemald.

The one part that did drag a bit for me was Labyrinthos part 2, because I knew that it was going to end with us using the ship to go after Meteion, I didn't believe for a second the exodus was going to actually happen.

[RyuDragnier]

Put differently, “Endwalker” was to the FFXIV franchise what “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” was to the Indiana Jones franchise.

You don't know what constitutes a good story if you call Endwalker bad.

Btw, just going to say the reason why we couldn't attune to the Aetheryte at Radz-at-Han here for everybody thinking it's dumb. They are dealing with people who kidnap and temper others, who can look like anybody else. The Aetheryte was shut off because they don't want a group or ARMY of these tempered thralls suddenly appearing in the middle of their capital city to kidnap/temper others. This leaves the front gate, which was at that moment under heavy guard, making it near impossible for a tempered individual to get in.

[Ransu]

Where's the downvote button?

[Lunalepsy]

FOREWARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS

I know there are a lot of people hating on Endwalker because of the numerous technical issues SE has been having due to their crappy servers, which has in turn resulted in a huge portion of the player base being unable to even play the game. This post is not about those technical issues; instead, it is a critique of why I personally thought that Endwalker was only "meh" overall for other reasons.

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?

Too Much Doom and Gloom
We've previously fought the Cloud of Darkness. Now we have to fight Zodiark, who we know is darkness (after all, we’ve been told that repeatedly up until now, and his trial is even called "The Dark Inside" and drops the Lynx of "Eternal Darkness"). It can’t get darker than that, right? Wrong. Finally, we have a character (Meteion) who has basically come to embody despair and hopelessness. Having to lose all of the Scions in order to get to Meteion was extremely tedious, and the “goodbyes” were a waste of time because you know that you’re just going to bring everyone back anyway thanks to the new superpower that Hydaelyn gave to you. Anyway, we finally get to her and do her dungeon. And then she goes full emo and we have to fight her again as a trial. And then we have to fight Zenos as a solo instance. Oh wait and then Zenos goes SSJ and then we have to fight him again as another solo instance. As much as I liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the ending of the Return of the King was really long. Like, you thought it was over, but then it just kept ending. That's what the end of the Endwalker story felt like, but worse. While Shadowbringer left on a high note, I was just hoping that Endwalker was actually finally over by the time I got to the end of it.

Dumb Dialogue
The whole Garlemald arc was pretty dumb. You have to deal with these emo Garleans who are so dumb that they can't see the difference between their invading other countries and trying to force their Garlean culture upon them versus us trying to just drop off somefood and CE. It’s like the difference of China invading Tibet versus a country sending some humanitarian aid in the form of supplies to a country ravaged by war. Alphinaud, who's supposed to be the smart one, is suddenly too dumb to point this out when confronted with this rhetoric by the legatus - it almost felt like what they did to Tyrion Lannister or Varys during the last season of GoT (i.e., made these supposedly smart characters suddenly bumbling idiots).

Speaking of dumb characters, when you get to Omicron portion of Ultima Thule, you spend a while running around doing quests and it’s 100% obvious that this is Omega’s home world. After spending a while there, G'raha is like “I think that this may be Omega’s world.” Like, no duh? How did you not notice that the moment we stepped foot on this island and saw the level checkers? It was sad and frustrating seeing even the former Crystal Exarch being portrayed so stupidly.

Conclusion
I really, really wanted to like Endwalker – I truly did. I’m fortunate enough that I get to play during times when there’s not a lot of congestion, so I can’t really complain about the wait times like a lot of folks on these forums. Parts of the story were really good and compelling. However, many other parts (I’d daresay the majority) of the story moved at the pace of flowing molasses and were simply not very interesting. As a result, my overall experience with respect to Endwalker was that it is an okay-ish expansion (with some absolutely amazing music).

Don't worry about these warriors—you nailed it!

[Themarvin]

FOREWARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS


Conclusion
I really, really wanted to like Endwalker – I truly did. I’m fortunate enough that I get to play during times when there’s not a lot of congestion, so I can’t really complain about the wait times like a lot of folks on these forums. Parts of the story were really good and compelling. However, many other parts (I’d daresay the majority) of the story moved at the pace of flowing molasses and were simply not very interesting. As a result, my overall experience with respect to Endwalker was that it is an okay-ish expansion (with some absolutely amazing music).

You haven't played any of the game at all, but skipped ARR/HW/SB/SHB entirely.

[RocciaSolida]

I really felt like I was on a roller-coaster. Incredible quests followed by annoying and boring ones like "run through the map with X" or "follow Y"

[Thoosa]

I still feel that the idea of Meteion becoming bad and wanting to wipe the universe out because of negative feelings and not wanting to upset Hermes was a bit weak and just a device to have a Big Bang conclusion to the story because Fandaniel and Zenos were weak enemies and could never match up to Emet-Selch.

It’s kinda like building up a story through several expansions and introducing regular baddies and then throwing them out on the last chapter (as in, you’ve actually not beaten the big baddies after all this time, let’s throw another ultimate baddie in that you don’t have -any previous connection with or history)

[Fawkes]

I mean overall I loved Endwalker but yeah I could nitpick about some things.


Garlemald seems lacking in the logic department. That dude invades your camp... and then you give in to his demands? And then he has a clear change of heart as he struggles to use the twins' shock collars, literally the next scene he's in after that he's invading your camp shooting at people? The legatus tries to play false equivalence with his "who are you to say your way of being nice and helping people is correct, and not our way of murder and enslavement?" and nobody can argue with that.

I didn't get enough Y'shtola sass for my liking, maybe I just picked all the wrong dialogue options but she felt like she left her cooler self on the first and reverted back into a less interesting character. And she couldn't tell Zenos wasn't the WoL because the tower did a thing, but then the fan favorite squad just instantly psychically knew? Y'shtola was like 100 yalms away, having her be like "who's that, that ain't WoL" would not have changed the scene in any way they just made her look bad for nothing. I brought her as a trust in the level 85 dungeon and she did fine, but then in the cutscene after it she was like "hey are you guys seeing people die and turn into monsters and then seeing those monsters? Because I can't see ANY of that" which I guess actually makes her performance in the dungeon kind of badass, but it's still a little weird. If you pick her as the person who knocks on your door she's just rude to you. Thancred sacrifices his soul to make an entire zone into a livable environment, but Y'shtola and Urianger combined just turns on an elevator.

[Tsukino]

I still feel that the idea of Meteion becoming bad and wanting to wipe the universe out because of negative feelings and not wanting to upset Hermes was a bit weak and just a device to have a Big Bang conclusion to the story because Fandaniel and Zenos were weak enemies and could never match up to Emet-Selch.

This sounds completely backwards to me. Meteion and Hermes were added to the story specifically to be involved in the events that created the Final Days, as well as why none of the ascians knew what caused them.

Fandaniel and Zenos teaming up was introduced prior to the expansion so that they could be misdirection from whatever the final story was going to be. It wasn't like they were going to be the main villains and then halfway through writing they realized it wasn't going to work and wrote something else. If you were paying attention, you knew there was no way the real story of the creation of Zodiark and Hydaelyn could have somehow been wrapped up through those two.

[Themarvin]

Neither of you played entirely through FFXIV from scratch to now... and or lack content severe... Endwalker is definately the best expansion to date, HW is not even coming close, nor SHB.... if you really have followed the story and not just claim to be having followed it, then you would know, you get a lot of the missing links to grand schemes finally solved and you get to work with it, also if you see the world our world Earth right now, alot of parallels weaved in as well, as was with all the other expansion, and as it is I do and did fancy seeing alot of the old crews again.... getting parts of the story revived inside my head and everything.

Endwalker > ALL

This is why you don't use jump potions, unless you actually are into the story, which is the main reason for the entire expansions, whenever it get to it.